RAPID PrivLog: The Future of Privilege Logging is Here
In every instance, privilege logging should be approached with extreme care. Because it’s an essential tool in protecting client privacy and can be part of a litigant’s case strategy, privilege logging requires an upfront understanding of the available approaches. Specifically, which ones support your legal strategy, and the tools that will aid you in meeting your objectives while reducing the burden, risks, and costs.
While there are numerous privilege logging approaches to consider, metadata logs—which are as they are named, logs with metadata extracted from documents like file names, senders, and dates—are typically quick and easy to generate during the eDiscovery processing stage. However, they often lack the crucial details needed for proper privilege evaluation, and typically require parties’ approval to use this method.
Adding subject matter descriptions, summaries, and other details to privilege logs are generally preferred, as this information helps the party asserting privilege to justify their claim, and the requesting party to assess its validity.
Unfortunately, creating these summaries and details manually is a slow, tedious, and costly process.
Enter Generative AI and RAPID PrivLog.
New-breed privilege logging tools powered by Generative AI revolutionize the process. Generative AI excels at tasks like summarizing and analyzing documents. This translates to significant cost and time savings by automating manual privilege logging. As importantly, it enhances accuracy and consistency in summaries and descriptions across various topics, leading to stronger defensible positions.
RAPID PrivLog streamlines privilege logging with custom-tuned Generative AI. This first-of-its-kind solution automates document summaries and descriptions across privileged topics, significantly reducing the burden on responding parties. It empowers informed decision-making by providing the requesting party with the necessary information to evaluate privilege claims.
RAPID PrivLog delivers impressive efficiency. As an internal managed review tool, it automates privilege log descriptions, boosting both consistency and accuracy. Compared to manual methods, RAPID PrivLog offers an estimated 40% time savings and 25% cost reduction. For optimal speed, accuracy, security, and cost, RAPID PrivLog integrates custom-tuned Generative AI models, including on-premises BERT and Mistral, which have been proven to yield the best results in terms of speed, accuracy, cost, and security.
Matching the Tool to the Privilege Log Approach: Where RAPID PrivLog Shines
Before diving into how Generative AI (and RAPID PrivLog in particular) can reduce the burden of privilege logging, it’s important to know what your choices are for privilege logging, which approach to use for each unique matter, your risk tolerance, and, importantly, whether the tool you select can accommodate the commonly accepted and newer types of privilege logs.
In fact, the Sedona Conference’s Commentary on Privilege Logs, Final Post-Public-Comment Version (May 2024), tackles the challenges of privilege logging. It offers strategies for both responding and requesting parties to navigate the competing interests and burdens associated with this process.
The Commentary goes beyond traditional approaches, recommending alternative log constructions. This includes options like metadata-plus-topic logs and tailored logs for various non-traditional data sources. (The Sedona Conference Commentary also explores considerations for privilege log exclusions for categories requiring less or no substantiation and using early conferences to discuss privilege logging issues. You can find the full commentary here.)
Here, we look at each privilege log approach one-by-one and how RAPID PrivLog can effectively and efficiently be used for all approaches.
Standard (Traditional) Logs. This is the most used and accepted log type. It builds on basic metadata by including work product designations. However, it requires a time-consuming and expensive manual review to add details beyond the metadata. While this approach offers richer information for justifying privilege claims, the trade-off is significant cost and time.
Rapid PrivLog to the rescue: RAPID PrivLog effectively eliminates first pass manual review of privilege logs by providing AI generated fields:
- RAPID Summary: Short summaries of the documents.
- RAPID Gen SM: General subject matter categorization.
- RAPID Assertions (ACC, WP, SM): Privilege assertions with corresponding accuracy scores.
These fields are used during the quality control process to validate the descriptions and finalize the assertions.
The combination of RAPID PrivLog generated fields with other metadata outlined above results in the entries added to your privilege log.
Categorical Logs. This type of privilege log uses the same information as a standard log, but groups documents into categories based on subject matter, custodian, or some other objective grouping. They are often preferred because of their organization of the data and to avoid the expense and delay of producing a document-by-document log. However, they are often critiqued for lack of specificity so do not end up being as effective at reducing costs and burdens as originally anticipated.
RAPID PrivLog to the rescue (again). Here’s where RAPID PrivLog shines. It automatically generates RAPID General Subject Matter that’s more specific than attorney-generated categories yet remains suitable for log inclusion. Additionally, the RAPID Summary provides a further layer of detail. These summaries can be edited if needed and are valuable during in-camera review for any challenges, offering a double layered approach to categorization.
Metadata-Plus-Topic Logs. Like basic metadata logs, metadata-plus-topic logs offer a table of withheld documents with readily available metadata fields. This approach goes a step further by including categorical information like subject matter and custodians. This categorization is particularly helpful for managing large volumes of privileged documents.
The good news? Metadata-plus-topic logs are becoming increasingly accepted, benefiting both responding and requesting parties. For the requesting party, it allows them to focus their requests for additional information.
RAPID PrivLog delivers efficiency. This format is standard practice for RAPID PrivLog and easily generated from the tool itself. It eliminates the need for manual sentence descriptions when you’re already providing the underlying data fields. This translates to a more straightforward deliverable.
Different Logs for Different Non-Traditional Sources. The rise of new data sources like text messages, collaboration platforms (Slack, Teams), and social media presents unique challenges. These platforms may not offer the same level of metadata readily available in traditional documents, making privilege logging difficult. The Sedona Conference recommends creating separate logs for non-traditional sources when they’re part of the review and need to be withheld. This is because the information needed to justify privilege might differ from standard logs.
RAPID PrivLog to the rescue (once more): Here’s where RAPID PrivLog demonstrates its versatility. The tool can readily identify data types and provide descriptions, allowing informed decisions about what information is needed for each document. Additionally, for non-traditional sources with limited metadata or those unsuitable for RAPID PrivLog’s OCR technology, attorneys can easily identify them and advocate for alternative approaches. This proactive approach ensures all sources are addressed effectively.
Unleash the Power of Generative AI for Privilege Logging
Traditional privilege logging can be a tedious and resource-intensive task. RAPID PrivLog empowers you to break free from these burdens. With its Generative AI-powered capabilities, RAPID PrivLog streamlines the process, saving you valuable time and resources. It simplifies the evaluation of various logging approaches, ensuring you choose the optimal fit for each case.
RAPID PrivLog is more than just a tool; it’s a reliable and efficient AI solution that demonstrably reduces the burden, time, and cost associated with privilege logging.
Ready to transform your privilege logging process? Contact UnitedLex today to learn more about RAPID PrivLog and discuss how to incorporate it into your next document review project.