I’m an old school guy that loves old, classic cars.  I even had one for a few years – a 1963 Ford Falcon convertible that I bought on eBay (my first purchase ever on eBay, so talk about jumping right into it!).  Cars from that era were simpler to maintain and fix whereas today’s cars are computerized and you have to take them to a service shop for even the simplest maintenance or repairs.  As a recent article from Compliance illustrates, document review isn’t so simple anymore either.

In their article Three Reasons Why This is Not Your Father’s Document Review Anymore, Compliance draws a comparison to the late ‘80s General Motors (GM) marketing campaign for their Oldsmobile automobile brand where they stated “this is not your father’s Oldsmobile” to show how the cars had been updated for current times.  It’s hard to believe, but some of the earliest document review platforms have been around since the ‘80s and ‘90s.  So, if you’re young enough and your father was in the legal profession back then, he literally could have used one of those early document review platforms.

For a lot of lawyers back then, document review followed a pretty standard workflow then, but that’s not the case anymore.  There are several factors that have complicated document review and changed it to the point where, as they note, “document review workflows are like snowflakes – no two workflows are alike”. That’s one of the big reasons that managed review services have become so popular — document review is much more complex and nuanced than it was 30+ years ago.

So, what are the three reasons that today’s review isn’t your father’s review anymore?  What is the “elephant in the room” for 2020?  And, what happened to the Oldsmobile?  I won’t steal their thunder – you can check out their article here.  And, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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