Workflow — Privilege Review

Privilege determinations in days, not weeks.

Documents flagged in first-pass — attorney-client, work-product, and common-interest analysis with metadata-ready privilege log generation. Tagged production set and log into Relativity, Reveal, Everlaw, or Lighthouse. Replaces senior contract attorneys on second-pass at a fraction of the per-hundred-doc rate.

Take the AI Assessment Get a Per-Document ROI Model

$200–$800

Per hundred docs at the senior contract attorney

2–4 weeks

Typical second-pass turnaround on flagged documents

60–85%

Volume off the second-pass attorney line after cutover

What This Replaces

The Senior Contract Attorney Sitting on a 5,000-Doc Privilege Pile

The work the senior contract attorney does on every privilege second-pass — and the cost of leaving it there.

The labor

Privilege second-pass today moves through senior contract attorneys at Epiq, Consilio, KLDiscovery, UnitedLex, Lighthouse, and Cobra Legal Solutions, often supplemented by associates from the matter law firm. Senior contract attorneys cost $50–$120 per hour billed; per-hundred-document review pricing typically runs $200–$800 depending on document complexity and language requirements.

The cycle time

Privilege second-pass turnaround of 2–4 weeks is standard for a 50K-document flagged set, with longer cycles when the privilege log requires custodian-by-custodian metadata review and when clawback events trigger re-review. Every week the privilege log isn't out the door is a week the case team can't validate the production-volume estimate, can't anticipate the privilege challenges from opposing counsel, and can't certify the production under Rule 26(g).

The Workflow

Input · Analysis · Output

What goes into privilege second-pass, what we do to it, and what shows up in the review platform.

Input

First-pass-flagged documents

Documents flagged in first-pass review as potentially privileged
Custodian metadata and email-thread context
Attorney roster and outside-counsel list per matter
Common-interest agreements and joint-defense memos
Prior privilege determinations from related matters
Clawback agreements and Rule 502(d) orders
Foreign-language candidates flagged for translation

Analysis

Determine, log, redact

Attorney-client privilege determination with basis
Work-product analysis (anticipation of litigation, mental impressions)
Common-interest privilege evaluation across joint-defense parties
Crime-fraud exception screening
Privilege log metadata field extraction (sender, recipients, date, subject, basis)
Redaction candidate identification per Rule 26(b)(5)
Confidence score per privilege determination; exceptions to attorney queue

Output

Tagged set + log into the platform

Privilege log in standard or court-ordered format
Relativity (REST API and RDOs)
Reveal (REST API)
Everlaw (REST API)
Lighthouse (Smart Workflows)
Redaction queue for production
Privilege-determination audit trail per document

Side by Side

Privilege Review Today vs. With Last Rev

The numbers that matter: cycle time, per-document cost, accuracy, and audit posture.

Dimension	Senior Contract Attorney Second-Pass	Last Rev Privilege Review
Cycle time, flagged set to privilege log	2–4 weeks (longer with foreign-language)	2–7 days
Per-hundred-doc unit cost	$200–$800 per hundred docs	Per-document, benchmarked at 25–45% of ALSP unit cost
Privilege log metadata completeness	Manual extraction, frequent missing fields	Metadata pre-populated from native files and email headers
Audit log per privilege determination	Reviewer notes, no determination-level lineage	Source clause + privilege basis + model version + confidence per determination
Common-interest and joint-defense handling	Reviewer-by-reviewer judgment, calibration meetings	Common-interest party list applied uniformly across the set
Clawback event response	Re-review the production set, reconstruct rationale	Audit log produces basis-for-determination on demand
Renegotiation leverage at next ALSP renewal	None — you're locked in	60–85% of second-pass volume off the contract

How It Works

From Flagged Documents to Audit-Ready Privilege Log

Five steps. Every one logged. Every one reversible if your confidence threshold isn't met.

Submission Lands

First-pass-flagged documents from Relativity, Reveal, Everlaw, or Lighthouse, with custodian metadata, email-thread context, and the matter-specific attorney roster and common-interest party list.

Extraction & Classification

Attorney-client privilege determined with the legal-advice-vs-business-advice analysis. Work-product analyzed for anticipation of litigation and mental impressions. Common-interest evaluated across the joint-defense party list. Crime-fraud exception screened.

Validation Against Privilege Bar

Determinations validated against your firm's privilege calibration sample and matter-specific seed determinations. Anything below your confidence threshold per determination is routed to a human exception queue — your call which queue, ours or yours.

Push to Review Platform

Tagged production set, redaction queue, and privilege log delivered into Relativity, Reveal, Everlaw, or Lighthouse via the documented integration. Privilege log in standard or court-ordered format with metadata fields populated.

Audit Log Persisted

Every privilege determination, basis, and redaction decision logged with the source paragraph, model version, prompt, and confidence score. Clawback-event response produces basis-for-determination on demand.

Compliance & Defensibility

Built to Meet the Privilege Bar Litigation Already Runs On

Rule 26(b)(5) privilege log compliance

Privilege log is generated in the standard format required by FRCP Rule 26(b)(5)(A) — sufficient detail to assess the privilege claim without revealing the privileged content. Court-specific local-rule formats supported as configurable templates.

Rule 502(d) clawback posture

Documents are tagged with a privilege basis, not just a privilege flag. If a clawback event occurs under a Rule 502(d) order, the audit log produces the basis on demand — cleaner than reconstructing months later from an attorney's notes.

Common-interest and joint-defense rigor

The matter-specific party list is applied uniformly across the entire set. When the joint-defense roster changes mid-matter, the audit log captures which version of the roster applied to which determination.

Privilege confidentiality & data residency

Privileged content stays inside your environment with privilege-aware logging. No outbound disclosure to third-party reviewer queues. Deployable in your VPC or our SOC 2 environment. Encryption in transit and at rest; retention policies tied to your matter.

Common Questions

What Litigation Teams Ask About Privilege Review

Relativity, Reveal, Everlaw, and Lighthouse have improving in-platform privilege features and we don't compete head-to-head with them. The competitor on this page is the senior-contract-attorney second-pass line on your matter budget — Epiq, Consilio, KLDiscovery, UnitedLex, Lighthouse review services billed at $50–$120 per hour for senior reviewers, or $200–$800 per hundred documents on a structured engagement. We undercut that labor cost, integrate directly into your existing review platform, and deliver tagged production sets, redaction queues, and privilege log drafts into the system of record.

First-pass review tags responsiveness, privilege, and hot-doc across the entire post-cull set. Privilege review is the focused second-pass on the privilege-flagged subset — privilege determinations, work-product analysis, common-interest evaluation, and privilege log generation. Different scopes, different deliverables, different bar — privilege second-pass requires senior-reviewer judgment that AI workflows are particularly good at applying consistently. We built each as a separate page so the workflow stays specific to what the case team buys.

Our pilot success threshold is privilege-determination accuracy at parity with or above your incumbent second-pass reviewer, measured on the same shadow-data sample of flagged documents and validated against the case-team's calibration set. Anything below your defined confidence threshold per determination is routed to a human exception queue — your call which queue, ours or yours.

The attorney-client privilege analysis applies the standard test — was the communication primarily for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal advice? — using the document's context, the sender/recipient roles (in-house counsel vs business executive vs outside counsel), and the substance of the communication. Borderline calls get tagged with a confidence score and the source-paragraph basis so the case team makes the final call on a richer file than an attorney's notes from a 50K-doc review.

When a clawback event happens, the audit log produces the privilege basis for any document on demand — what the AI determined, what the original basis was, what model version was used, and what the confidence score was. That's the chain of custody you need to defend the inadvertent-production claim. Cleaner than reconstructing from a contract attorney's notes months later.

Yes — through the documented integration surface each platform supports. Relativity via the Relativity REST API and RDOs (with privilege-specific RDOs configured); Reveal, Everlaw, and Lighthouse via their published REST APIs. Your IT team reviews and approves a service account, and we connect through the documented integration. We do not require platform-side custom development.

Privilege-review pilots typically run 4–6 weeks: 1 week of integration and matter-specific calibration with case counsel (attorney roster, common-interest party list, calibration sample), 2–3 weeks of shadow-mode running on the privilege-flagged subset with no platform-side determination writes, 1–2 weeks of supervised cutover. Production rollout is staged after the pilot meets your accuracy and SLA bar.

We benchmark against your current per-hundred-doc privilege second-pass rate — typically $200–$800. Our target is 25–45% of that per-document cost at higher accuracy and faster cycle time. Pricing structures around volume tiers and outcome SLAs, not hourly billable rates.

Two Ways to Start

Take the AI assessment for a structured read on privilege-review feasibility on your typical matters. Or talk to us if you already know which second-pass line is bleeding the most labor cost.

Self-serve · 8 minutes

Take the AI Assessment

A short structured assessment that maps your typical privilege-flagged volume, your review platform, and your current second-pass arrangement to AI feasibility and ROI.

Talk to a specialist

Get a Per-Document ROI Model

Send us your typical matter size, your review platform, and your current second-pass arrangement. We'll come back with a per-document unit-cost comparison and a pilot plan in 5 business days.

Other Workflows

More Legal Workflows We Replace

The same approach, applied to the other document-heavy labor lines on your legal-ops or ALSP budget.

eDiscovery First-Pass

Responsiveness, privilege, and hot-doc tagging across 200K–5M documents in Relativity, Reveal, or Everlaw.

Foreign Language Review

Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, German, Portuguese, and Arabic documents triaged for responsiveness — hot-doc translation only on the shortlist.

M&A Due Diligence Review

Data-room contracts triaged for change-of-control, MAC/MAE, and indemnification — issues list into Intralinks or Datasite in days.

Contract Review

Third-party paper reviewed against your playbook — clauses extracted, deviations flagged, redlines drafted into iManage or NetDocuments.