Privilege review has long been one of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of discovery. Attorneys know that a single misstep, producing a privileged document or over-redacting, can change the course of a case. Despite years of refinement, the traditional approach to privilege review remains cumbersome, expensive, and risky.
Why It’s So Difficult
Privilege review is about context. Determining whether a document is privileged isn’t just about spotting the word “attorney” or scanning for legalese. It often requires piecing together relationships, understanding roles, and interpreting subtle nuances in communication.
Some of the biggest challenges include:
- Incomplete Attorney Lists: No matter how diligent your team is, it’s nearly impossible to maintain a complete, up-to-date list of every lawyer, assistant, or paralegal who might appear in a dataset. Miss one, and you risk missing documents in a privilege screen.
- Dual Hats: In-house counsel often wear both business and legal hats. Legal advice is privileged; business advice is not. Sorting the two could feel like splitting hairs.
- Drafts vs. Finals: Draft agreements are privileged, but once they’re finalized and sent to opposing counsel, they’re not. Without context, distinguishing between the two can be tricky.
- Clawbacks: Accidentally disclosing a privileged document can be disastrous. Even if clawed back, opposing counsel has already seen it.
The Limits of Traditional Methods
Traditionally, privilege review starts with search terms and attorney lists. Contract reviewers flag potential documents, and senior attorneys make final privilege calls. This iterative process works, but it’s slow, costly, and still prone to human error. And while keyword searches capture plenty, they also drag in junk: disclaimers, spam, or references to “legal” in entirely non-privileged contexts.
How AI Changes the Equation
This is where tools like Relativity’s aiR for Privilege offer a game-changing approach. Instead of relying solely on keywords, AI examines the bigger picture:
- Contextual Analysis: AI interprets language in context, distinguishing between “legal entity name” and “I talked to legal about the contract.”
- Relationship Mapping: By analyzing communication networks, email domains, and aliases, AI can recognize when “Mike” is really attorney Michael Smith, even if he shows up with multiple nicknames or email addresses.
- Consistency Across Matters: AI learns from prior projects using the brain, so privilege determinations become more consistent across cases.
The Payoff
Attorneys remain the final decision-makers, but with AI support (not Allen Iverson or his lethal crossover), they’re not starting from scratch. AI narrows the universe of potentially privileged documents, helps reduce false positives, and generates defensible rationales for each call. The result is less wasted time, lower costs, and fewer sleepless nights worrying about inadvertent disclosure.
Privilege review will always be high stakes, but with the right technology, it doesn’t have to be quite so painful.
How Page One Helps
At Page One, Inc., we don’t just provide the technology, we partner with you to make privilege review manageable, defensible, and efficient leveraging the best of breed technology partners like Relativity. With our experience across complex matters, we ensure that aiR for Privilege delivers maximum value for your team.
Ready to simplify privilege review? Reach out to Page One today to see how we can help you move faster, reduce risk, and protect what matters most. More Powerful Together.