Beware of the Downsides of Offshore Outsourcing of Document Review

There has been an ongoing debate regarding outsourcing litigation support services to offshore countries such as India and Canada.  Years ago the debate centered around subjective and objective coding.  In recent years the term legal process outsourcing (LPO) has been an attractive subject in our industry.  Some of the services provided by LPO companies include legal research, document coding, data entry and document review. As many of us have experienced over the last several years, the explosion of electronically stored information (ESI) such as electronic documents and email, has drastically changed the way we think about document review and has forced law firms to entertain the ideal of legal process outsourcing (LPO) to help control and reduce the associated cost with performing document review.

Typically in complex litigations, we are faced with reviewing millions of documents at a time.  The documents are routinely being reviewed by teams of paralegals, associates or contract attorneys, in an effort to identify whether or not documents are:

1.  Relevant to the case

2.  Key or "hot" documents

3.  Confidential

4.  Privileged

Consider the following before choosing offshore outsourcing for your document review:

1. How do the laws of the country to which you are offshoring treat attorney-client privilege, work product privilege, privacy, confidentiality, and ethical issues?
2. What are your rights and recourse in the case of data theft or misappropriation?
3. Are language issues surmountable?
4. What employee screening and training processes are employed by the outside vendor to insure that the most competent, ethical individuals are working on your project?
5. What quality control measures does the outside vendor employ to insure that documents are being coded correctly and key documents are not being missed?
6. What processes can you put into place to quality control the work from your end?
7. What security measures does the outside vendor employ to prevent misappropriation?
8. What type of professional liability insurance does the outside vendor retain?

Although LPO seems like an attractive cost-cutting option, missing key documents during document review can have dire consequences on the outcome of the case. As we have seen during our years in the industry, failing to produce relevant documents can lead to costly discovery disputes and sanctions.  Now you make the call.