Early in the litigation the case team must make a determination about the scope of the review: what is to be reviewed, how it is to be reviewed, and what is the intended outcome. To a great extent, the discovery order will direct what data is to be collected and reviewed.
A meet-and-confer conference between the parties should be conducted early on in the planning stages to make these decisions. The proposed change to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26(f) states that these initial meeting are to include discussions and decisions on matters pertaining to electronically stored information (ESI). Topics to be determined include preservation of ESI, the form of production for the ESI, and approaches for asserting privilege and work-product protection claims. Each of these decisions impact the planning of the document review.












