Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Document Review Attorney

🎯 Role Definition

A Document Review Attorney (also called Contract Attorney or E-Discovery Review Attorney) performs high-volume legal document review and analysis in support of litigation, regulatory investigations, mergers and acquisitions, and compliance matters. This role focuses on identifying responsive and privileged documents, applying legal frameworks to factual records, performing redactions, and documenting decisions using e-discovery platforms such as Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull, or Concordance. Ideal candidates demonstrate strong litigation knowledge, a meticulous eye for detail, exemplary time management under review quotas, and consistent application of privilege and confidentiality protocols.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Judicial law clerk or summer associate roles with exposure to litigation.
Litigation paralegal or e-discovery analyst transitioning to attorney-led review.
Junior litigation associate or recent law school graduate seeking document review experience.

Advancement To:

Senior Document Review Attorney / Lead Review Attorney
E-Discovery Project Manager or Review Manager
Litigation Associate focusing on discovery and case management
In-house counsel managing investigations or compliance

Lateral Moves:

Litigation Support Specialist or E-Discovery Analyst
Vendor-side Review Manager or Quality Control Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Conduct thorough line-by-line review and coding of documents for responsiveness, privilege, confidentiality, relevancy to issues, and specific issue tagging in accordance with matter-specific protocols and legal objectives.
Apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, relevant state rules, and case-specific discovery orders to identify discoverable materials and appropriately log responsiveness decisions in the review platform.
Perform detailed privilege and work-product analyses, enter privilege designations, and prepare privilege logs or privilege summaries according to legal standards and client instructions.
Execute redactions of sensitive or privileged information using redaction tools within document review platforms while preserving metadata and ensuring defensible documentation of redaction rationale.
Follow and enforce strict chain-of-custody, confidentiality, and data protection procedures when handling potentially privileged or confidential client information and work-product.
Review and tag attachments and families, ensuring consistent treatment of parent-child relationships and related documents to maintain evidentiary integrity.
Resolve ambiguous or borderline coding issues by escalating to supervising attorneys, preparing issues for attorney conferences, and documenting guidance for consistent team application.
Maintain high-volume coding productivity and quality metrics (e.g., pages/hour, accuracy rates) to meet matter timelines and contractual obligations while tracking time and producing daily status reports.
Collaborate with project managers and vendor partners to triage document sets, prioritize review workflows, and reassign reviewer teams to optimize throughput during peak review periods.
Conduct quality control checks, second-level reviews, and spot-checks of other reviewers’ coding to validate accuracy, consistency, and adherence to the review protocol.
Prepare and maintain detailed review notes, coding conventions, and exceptions lists to create an audit trail and facilitate defensible discovery positions.
Perform targeted factual and legal text searches, run analytics queries, and use predictive coding or TAR tools under supervisory guidance to prioritize review populations and reduce manual review volume.
Draft concise issue memos and summaries for case teams describing key documents, trends found in the document population, and potential evidentiary issues or case strategy considerations.
Assist in preparing production-ready datasets, confirming Bates numbering, file formats, redaction logs, and ensuring all documents are properly formatted for production according to client and court requirements.
Coordinate with litigation teams to identify custodian relevance, key date ranges, and custodial search parameters to narrow datasets and increase review efficiency.
Participate in meet-and-confer sessions or calls with opposing counsel regarding discovery scope, search methodology, and production logistics when requested by supervising counsel.
Train, mentor, and provide daily feedback to junior reviewers and contract attorneys to ensure consistent application of review protocols and continuous improvement in review quality.
Escalate potential privilege waivers, inadvertent disclosures, or ethical issues to supervising counsel promptly and prepare initial incident summaries as requested.
Document and reconcile discrepancies between document metadata and file contents (e.g., OCR errors, missing pages) and work with e-discovery vendors to remediate issues.
Handle multi-jurisdictional matters by applying jurisdiction-specific privilege rules, foreign data protection considerations, and cross-border production hurdles when applicable.
Review and analyze contracts, emails, spreadsheets, and attachments for issue spotting, key fact extraction, and to support timeline development and deposition preparation.
Participate in post-review lessons learned and process improvement initiatives to streamline review protocols, reduce re-work, and recommend platform or workflow enhancements.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc privilege log creation and update privilege and confidentiality spreadsheets for delivery to clients and opposing counsel.
Assist in configuring search terms, saved queries, and automatic filters in review platforms to refine populations for expedited review.
Participate in test reviews and calibration exercises prior to large-scale review launches to ensure consistent interpretation of issue coding.
Help evaluate vendor proposals, including pricing models for document review, to support cost-effective staffing and resourcing decisions.
Contribute to matter budgets by estimating review hours, reviewer ramp-up times, and anticipated quality assurance cycles.
Maintain and update internal knowledge bases and playbooks on review best practices, tools, and recent legal developments affecting discovery.
Volunteer to pilot new review tools such as predictive coding, email threading, near-duplicate detection, and advanced analytics to increase review efficiency.
Support client-facing deliverables such as review status reports, volume trend charts, and production checklists when requested by project leads.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficient use of Relativity for document review, searching, tagging, productions, and Analytics/TAR workflows.
Experience with other review platforms: Everlaw, Logikcull, Concordance, Ringtail, Clearwell, or Summation.
Strong working knowledge of e-discovery lifecycle concepts: collection, processing, review, privilege logs, and production.
Ability to perform advanced Boolean and proximity searches; familiarity with concept searching, email threading, and deduplication techniques.
Redaction experience, including tool-based redactions and ensuring redaction metadata and OCR integrity for productions.
Familiarity with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) discovery obligations and common civil litigation discovery orders.
Comfort with Excel for reporting, pivot tables, reconciliation of review metrics, and creating production manifests.
Basic understanding of data formats, metadata, Bates numbering, TIFF/PDF/Native productions, and OCR limitations.
Experience with timekeeping and matter management systems (e.g., iManage, Clio, TimeSolv) and adherence to billing/detailing requirements.
Knowledge of data privacy considerations and cross-border data transfer restrictions when handling international document sets.
Experience using predictive coding/TAR, concept clustering, and other analytics to reduce manual review load.

Soft Skills

Exceptional attention to detail and high tolerance for repetitive tasks without compromise to accuracy.
Strong analytical judgment, able to apply legal standards to factual document analysis and make defensible coding decisions.
Excellent written and verbal communication for drafting memos, summarizing findings, and escalating issues to supervising counsel.
Time management and prioritization under aggressive deadlines with an ability to meet daily/weekly production targets.
Team-oriented approach with experience mentoring junior reviewers and coordinating with multi-disciplinary litigation teams.
High level of discretion, professionalism, and ethical awareness when handling privileged or confidential materials.
Adaptability to changing review protocols, evolving case strategy, and rapid onboarding to new platforms or processes.
Client-service mindset with the ability to receive and incorporate feedback quickly and maintain positive client relationships.
Problem-solving orientation to identify root causes of review issues and propose defensible workflow adjustments.
Resilience and stress management for intensive review periods and peak discovery phases.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from an accredited law school.

Preferred Education:

Active bar admission in at least one U.S. jurisdiction and in good standing.
Coursework or certification in e-discovery, litigation support, or information governance (e.g., ACEDS).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Law (Juris Doctor)
Litigation and e-discovery related certifications (ACEDS, vendor-specific training)
Paralegal studies or information governance as supplemental qualifications

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

0–7+ years legal experience. Many roles hire attorneys with 0–3 years for entry-level review, while complex matters may require 3–7+ years of litigation or e-discovery experience.

Preferred:

1–3 years of litigation experience with substantive document review, privilege analysis, or discovery work.
Demonstrated experience using Relativity or equivalent review platform and meeting review quality targets.
Prior experience on large-scale reviews (100k+ documents) or government/regulatory investigations preferred.