Workflow
Legal document review AI that works like a careful paralegal. It indexes each production, tags documents against your issue list, holds possible privilege for an attorney, and returns sourced summaries for review. Your attorneys make every call that matters.
First-pass review · Production Set 3
Document review is the slow middle of many matters. Productions land, someone has to make sense of them, and attorneys wait for an index before they can think. This workflow takes the first pass so your reviewers start with structure instead of a pile.
Each incoming set is read in full and grouped into the categories your team uses: correspondence, agreements, financial records, photos, and so on. Corrected or replacement sets are matched to the earlier versions they update.
Files that will not open, pages that repeat, and documents with no clear date go to an exception list. A person decides what to do with each one.
A good index answers simple questions fast. Who sent this? When? What kind of document is it? The platform builds that index for every set, with Bates ranges and a short description per entry.
Your paralegal can sort it, filter it, and hand it to an associate the same day the production arrives.
Attorneys write the issue list. It might cover notice, damages, a pricing dispute, or one key meeting. The platform tags documents to those issues using the coding instructions your team provides.
Documents that might fit an issue but are unclear are routed to a separate queue rather than forced into a tag.
The platform looks for signs that a document may be privileged or protected: counsel on a chain, legal advice language, or names your team has listed. It holds those documents in a privilege queue.
It never decides privilege. It flags, explains why, and waits. An attorney makes and records every privilege call.
Assign a deposition, hearing, or recorded interview transcript and receive a summary in your firm's format, with page and line cites for each point. Topics can follow the issue list so testimony lines up with the documents.
Statements that seem to clash with a produced document are flagged with both locations.
Some documents change the case. The platform prepares a short list of candidates that match the attorney's criteria, such as a key date, a named decision maker, or a phrase tied to the claim.
The list is a starting point. Attorneys decide what is truly hot, and the reasons for each candidate are written out so they can judge quickly.
Outside of discovery, the same skills apply to agreements. The platform reviews contracts and leases against the checklist your firm already uses and reports what each document says on each point.
Missing terms, unusual wording, and blank fields are listed for the reviewing attorney.
Large firms solve review with staff and contract teams. A 12-attorney firm rarely can. The pressures below explain why so many smaller litigation groups fall behind on productions they already have.
Opposing counsel produces on their schedule. Three sets can land in one week after a month of quiet. A team sized for the average week cannot absorb the peak without pulling people off other matters.
When the index lags, everything downstream lags with it: issue outlines, witness prep, and motion work.
Full e-discovery platforms are powerful, and many firms use one for hosting and production. They also assume a dedicated review team and a project manager to run them.
A small firm often needs something else: a paralegal-level pass that organizes, tags, and summarizes, then hands clean work to the people already on the case.
A reviewer on document 900 of 1,200 is not as sharp as they were on document 40. Late-batch mistakes are the ones that hurt, because that is where a privileged email slips past or a key exhibit gets a vague tag.
Moving the repetitive first pass to a defined workflow lets people spend their attention on the documents that need judgment.
Review time draws hard questions on invoices, and on fixed-fee or contingency matters it comes straight out of margin. Either way, hours spent sorting are hours not spent building the case.
Your firm sets its own billing approach. A shorter first pass simply gives you more room to choose.
In many firms, one paralegal knows where everything is. When that person is out or leaves, the team loses the map.
A sourced index, a tagged issue set, and written summaries keep the map in the matter file, where anyone on the team can use it.
Litigators are skeptical for good reason. They want to know what was tagged and why, how errors are caught, and whether anything left the firm without approval.
That is why every tag carries its reason, every summary carries its cites, and a sampling step sits between the first pass and anyone relying on it.
Pick an output to see what comes back. Every example below is invented and illustrative.
| Custodian | Date range and type | Docs |
|---|---|---|
| Purchasing lead | Jan to Jun 2024 · email and attachments | 612 |
| Regional manager | Feb to May 2024 · email | 388 |
| Finance shared drive | 2023 to 2024 · spreadsheets | 204 |
| No custodian listed | Mixed dates · scanned paper | 96 |
| Unreadable files | Set aside for staff follow-up | 14 |
| Issue | Reason for tag | Docs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Notice | Mentions the March 1 notice letter or its receipt | 41 |
| 2 · Pricing change | Discusses the revised unit price | 118 |
| 3 · Late shipments | Lists ship dates past the contract window | 73 |
| 4 · Mitigation | Refers to substitute suppliers | 22 |
| Unclear fit | Routed to the reviewer queue, not tagged | 35 |
| Document | Why it was held | Status |
|---|---|---|
| PLT-1102 | Outside counsel on the To line | Attorney decides |
| PLT-1140 | Words "legal advice" in subject | Attorney decides |
| PLT-1177 | In-house counsel forwarded to vendor | Question |
| PLT-1209 | Draft memo saved in the legal folder | Attorney decides |
| All held | Nothing released until an attorney clears it | 31 |
| Checklist item | What the lease says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Term and renewal | Five years, two renewal options | § 3.1 |
| Rent increases | Fixed 3% step each lease year | § 4.2 |
| Assignment | Landlord consent, not to be unreasonably withheld | § 12 |
| Repair duties | Roof and structure clause refers to an exhibit | Ex. C |
| Exhibit C | Referenced in the lease but not attached | MISSING |
Trust is earned in samples. After each first pass, a reviewer pulls a set of tagged and untagged documents and checks them against the coding instructions. Your firm sets the sample size and the standard.
Disagreements are recorded and fed back as clearer instructions. If a sample misses the standard, the batch goes back before anyone relies on it.
Indexing and sorting run as Automated work. Tags, summaries, and hot-document lists are Review Required. Privilege calls, relevance disputes, what to produce, and what to argue are Attorney-Controlled.
Your firm can move a step to a stricter tier at any time. Every output keeps a review trail showing who checked it.
This is not a replacement for an e-discovery platform. Many firms keep their hosting and production tools and use this workflow for the paralegal layer around them.
It works alongside your existing case-management and document systems, so the index and tags land where your team already looks.
Each firm codes differently. Firm Intelligence holds your issue lists, coding manuals, naming rules, and summary formats, and applies them to every set.
When attorneys update the issue list mid-case, the next pass follows the new version and notes which documents may need a second look.
Review is not only discovery. The same first-pass, flag, and hand-back pattern fits several recurring tasks that eat paralegal hours.
A client hands over 60 vendor agreements and asks which ones allow early termination. The platform checks each one against your checklist and returns a table with the answer and the clause behind it.
Agreements that are missing pages or signatures are listed first.
For real estate and business matters, the platform prepares lease abstracts in your format: parties, term, rent, renewals, assignment, and default terms, each with a section cite.
Odd or one-sided terms are noted for the attorney, who decides whether they matter.
Records from third parties arrive with cover letters, certifications, and gaps. The platform checks each return against what was requested and lists what is missing.
A follow-up letter can be drafted from your template for a person to send.
Before a deposition or hearing, teams need to know which exhibits a witness has seen and where they were discussed. The platform builds a cross-reference from transcripts and the index.
Exhibits referenced but never marked are flagged for the case team.
Partners want to know where review stands without reading a spreadsheet. The platform compiles a short weekly note per matter: sets received, sets indexed, queue sizes, and open exceptions.
The note is a draft for the case paralegal to confirm.
Illustrative figures for a small litigation group receiving about one production a week. Not a client result.
The sooner the index exists, the sooner an attorney is reading the documents that matter.
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Published after the first pilot, with named approval.
Illustrative figures for a business client sending a batch of vendor agreements. Not a client result.
Consistent checklist answers make the attorney's advice faster to give and easier to defend.
Plan a pilot scopeA pilot takes one review task, such as production indexing or checklist review of leases. Before day one, we record how long it takes your team today.
Over 30 days we track turnaround, documents processed, review time, sample agreement rates, and the size and quality of the exception list.
Samples come back clean more often. Reviewers spend less time per document than they did coding from scratch. Exception lists are short and specific.
Your team judges each of these against its own baseline. At day 30 you decide whether to expand, adjust, or stop, with your own numbers in hand.
A short call about how review runs at your firm today: production volume, coding habits, privilege steps, and who checks what. You leave with a ranked shortlist of review tasks to delegate first.
Something else on your mind? Ask us in a demo.
It is software that performs the first pass of document review the way a trained paralegal would. It organizes productions, indexes documents, tags them to an attorney's issue list, and flags items that need a person. Attorneys review the results and make every legal call.