Some of you may think technology will eliminate document review, but it’s here to stay. So, why not make it better? ALTorney is looking to do just that!
The management team for ALTorney (link to their site here) may be familiar to you – it’s Rachi Messing, who has been an industry veteran with Equivio and Microsoft (and co-host with Tom O’Connor of the eDiscovery Channel interview series of eDiscovery industry luminaries) and his brother Shimmy Messing, who has also been an industry veteran and was the former CTO with Advanced Discovery.
ALTorney is designed to address the antiquated and broken system for hiring document reviewers for review projects that currently exists. Currently, many reviewers will call their recruiter when they’re looking for a review project, as will the firms looking to add reviewers to a specific review project. Both groups are at the control of the recruiter where there is a lack of transparency as to what reviewers are available, how qualified they are, whether they have performed well or poorly in previous reviews, or – most importantly – what the reviewer is being paid versus what the rate is to the client.
The ALTorney platform is designed to provide the marketplace where reviewers can be automatically matched up with the law firms, service providers, and corporations looking to add reviewers to their projects. Those companies can set up a review project and the parameters associated with it – like estimated documents to be reviewed per hour and deadline to determine number of reviewers needed, desired hourly rate, etc. – to get insight into real time market availability of reviewers.
In the meantime, reviewers can enter all the information that would normally be sent back and forth in communications with a recruiter to enable firms to properly match the appropriate reviewers with their job requirements.
Reviewers get automatically notified via email and text message of projects where they are a match, but they can also use the Find Projects Search page to see all available projects even if they do not meet the requirements. When they click on a project to see the details it will inform them of any requirements that they may be missing so they can determine if it is a project to which they want to apply.
And the Reviewer Dashboard provides information at a glance about the projects they are working on, their earnings, their availability calendar, and time entries.
I met with Rachi and Shimmy last week and they started signing up reviewers in May (according to them, they have signed up “tenfold” more reviewers than expected at this point) and their first clients began using it in July to staff their review projects. According to Rachi and Shimmy, it has worked as expected so far!
The platform also includes features like automated conflict checks, schedule availability for reviewers, recorded strengths and capabilities for each reviewer, and the ability for firms to identify favorites and block reviewers that they don’t wish to work with again (which will make it so they no longer see any available projects from that firm). It even manages billing and invoicing, time approval and provides mentoring to help reviewers in their career! Upcoming features on the roadmap include ratings for both reviewers and clients (like Uber does with its customers and drivers), quality metrics for review and even collaboration tools.
Because of their expertise in the industry and the contacts that Rachi and Shimmy have developed over the years, ALTorney seems to be positioned well to revolutionize the marketplace for document review to benefit both reviewers and clients alike!
In addition, Rachi told me that they are running an End of Summer Special right now through the end of the month with a reduced markup rate for all reviewers on a client’s first project. So, this may be a great time to give ALTorney a try. For more information, check out their site here.
So, what do you think? Do you agree that the document reviewer marketplace needs to be revolutionized? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.