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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Fascinating what passes for "training" in Temp Town

On my new project, less than two weeks in, we all just got shifted to working on the privilege log.  I don't know if anyone got cut because their work on first review made it clear they are too stupid to do privilege logging, but I would not be surprised either way. On the one hand, doing a privilege log requires that you actually know what a privileged document is, and how to describe it on the log so that it sounds like a privileged document. It also requires that you know what a responsive document is, as probably half of the documents you will see that are marked privileged and responsive area at least not responsive, and frequently are neither responsive nor privileged.

For me, joy is found when a document is not responsive or privileged. I am happy, though, if a document is simply not responsive. Either way, I don't have to do a privilege log entry for the document -- I can kick it out. I don't think a lot of my fellow loggers understand that -- and this is not peculiar to this project. Most folks doing privilege log entries will try anything to describe a document as both responsive and privileged, even if it is neither, rather than kick the document out. I will never understand this. There is an obvious path of least resistance here, and it does not involve logging every single document.

I don't think there is any doubt that 30 minutes of training will change whether someone has any insight into whether a document is privileged or responsive. Realistically, that kind of education is not going to happen, in 30 or 300 minutes. All this training is supposed to do is give some guidance on how to create a privilege log entry that the privilege log quality control people can turn into something that passes for the legal requirements of a privilege log entry.It's not pretty, and I really doubt that it truly satisfies the Department of Justice' requirements, but there you are. It works, the DOJ is OK with it, and that is all anyone really cares about.

Who am I to argue?

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