Legal documents can be anything from simple forms to lengthy case law that contains a numbe of pages. Litigation document coding, often known as legal coding, is a useful tool that enables lawyers to easily dig deeper into the crucial papers related to their case. Legal coders accurately extract key information from a document collection, enabling reviewers to conduct focused searches to find precisely the documents that are essential to support their arguments. It is expensive to hire and train full-time staff members to index and code legal documents. Having these people on a constant retainer would be expensive for the company significantly because expedited discovery demands come and go. So legal process outsourcing to a reliable service provider is the ideal way to implement a litigation/legal coding process in a law firm.
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Learn more: What is Legal Process Outsourcing? |
What Is Litigation Document Coding and Why Is It Relevant?
The process of adding syntax to a standard legal precedent so that it can be correctly processed with legal document automation or assembly software is known as “litigation document coding.” Legal coding is a very popular method of data collection because when documents are classified, they follow a set of standardized norms. These standards have been improved over time, and they are now widely recognized as an efficient, precise, and quick method of gathering data for legal needs. Another factor that contributes to its popularity is the fact that it is administered by coders with excellent command and knowledge of coding principles, legal jargon, and coding regulations.
The simplicity of taking out unwanted information contributes to a flawless document review process. By making it easier for reviewers to access key terms and names pertinent to their case and, in many circumstances, identifying and discarding unnecessary documents that clog the review landscape, having well-indexed and categorized documents facilitates the fact-finding process. Legal coding makes it quick and easy for attorneys to find the information they need, saving them time and improving the quality of the services they offer their customers.
Once the litigation coding procedure has been completed, the results are always accessible and the files never need to go through the category process again. When it comes to the keeping of legal records and the fees involved, this is a big benefit. Many businesses pay hundreds of dollars each month in records management expenses for onsite space and offsite storage. You can keep the data forever, much more affordably with data entry and legal document coding process.
Automated analytics based tools that aim to categorize significant data without human involvement are not error-free. These techniques frequently fail to capture information that can only be discovered through a careful examination conducted by qualified litigation coding specialists. It is imperative that attorneys and law firms don’t primarily rely on automated solutions when manual review and litigation coding tasks may be accomplished flawlessly, inexpensively, and without any chance of error.
How Can Litigation Document Coding Service Help Law Firms?
- Data capture: In this process, the relevant information is digitally scanned from printed, handwritten, scanned, and digital legal documents. Some of the scanned documents include information about civil and criminal cases, property records, court papers for divorce, insurance claim records, and more. Law graduates with training in data capturing carry out the process, which is supported by QA experts.
- Create a brief writing: The coding team compiles the facts from the assimilated data after the data has been entered. In order to establish the case, patterns, and legal interpretations that have a significant impact on a court decision, the brief writing comprises analyzing legal cases and making connections between them. In order to guarantee that the proper connection is made, this is done in a step-by-step manner.
- Document analysis: The relevant data is analyzed at this step in order to gain insightful knowledge from it. This aids in streamlining both the defense and judicial processes. Verifying, purging, validating, summarizing, and presenting the data in a file format or database of the client’s choice is a crucial component of document analysis. Data analysis employs several cutting-edge technologies, including as MS-SQL, Win Cross, Quantum, Dimension, Access, and Quanvert.
- Subjective Coding: This crucial service associates a legal interpretation with a specific document. It is crucial because it involves inserting data from a document, like topic or issue codes, that calls for the coder to use logic and judgment. Since the coders have a thorough awareness of legal coding laws, concepts, norms, and terminology, service providers specialize in this service. The clients use the expertise of highly qualified individuals to obtain specialized coding services in accordance with their unique needs.
- Documents Unitization: After obtaining the logical sequence, this stage entails physically assembling the individual scanned pages into documents. This stage comes after the objective and subjective coding stage. The majority of the documents are made up of data extraction, notes, scanned image footers, and contexts like trailing emails, all of which were obtained after careful examination. The documents are filed for usage after they have been properly organized and grouped together.
- In-text coding: After all the previous stages are completed, the service provider helps with in-text coding. In-text coding is the marking of specific codes, symbols, or words with the text in order to aid in reading. By going through the symbols in the code, the depicted codes assist legal representatives in thinking along a particular line. This makes it easier to read the information quickly and carefully.
- Coding Summarization: The codes are now properly organized in this last stage of the legal coding service. After each document is coded, they are all combined and linked one by one in accordance with the client’s aims and objectives. The coding summarization service is intended to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the legal coding procedure.
While enterprises are aware of the necessity and value of a litigation document coding service, having one in-house comes with several challenges, such as employing specialists and sustaining regular operating costs. Outsourcing legal coding requirements to professionals is the simple approach to get around these limitations and satisfy all the coding standards. It will be easier to find documents and retrieve data if litigation coding is delegated to a reputable legal process outsourcing business; with such a service provider to assist, legal professionals can concentrate on their core competencies.
