Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Document Review Analyst

🎯 Role Definition

A Document Review Analyst is an eDiscovery and litigation-support professional responsible for performing high-volume, high-quality document review to assess relevance, responsiveness, privilege, confidentiality, and issue coding for litigation, regulatory matters, investigations, and contract review. The role combines hands-on use of review platforms (Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull, Ringtail), proficiency with TAR/predictive coding workflows, metadata analysis, quality control, and close collaboration with legal teams, project managers, and IT to produce defensible discovery outputs.

Keywords: document review, eDiscovery, litigation support, privilege review, Relativity, TAR, predictive coding, metadata analysis, production, redaction, GDPR, HIPAA, compliance.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Paralegal supporting litigation or compliance teams
Legal assistant with experience in document management
Junior eDiscovery technician or litigation support specialist

Advancement To:

Senior Document Review Analyst / Lead Reviewer
eDiscovery Project Manager / Litigation Support Manager
Privilege Review Lead or Quality Assurance Manager

Lateral Moves:

Compliance Analyst (privacy & regulatory review)
Contract Reviewer / Contract Analyst
Data Analyst within eDiscovery or legal operations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Conduct detailed line-by-line review of electronic and hard-copy documents to identify relevance, responsiveness, privilege, confidentiality, and applicable issue tags for litigation, regulatory investigations, internal investigations, and contract disputes, ensuring coding decisions are defensible and documented.
Apply case-specific review protocols and coding taxonomy consistently, including applying responsiveness and issue codes, privilege designations (attorney-client, work product), confidentiality markings (e.g., HIPAA, PII, trade secret), custodian tagging, and chronology/chain-of-custody notes.
Operate and optimize document review platforms such as Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull, Ringtail, Concordance, Nextpoint, or Reveal; create, run, and refine complex saved searches, filters, and facets to enhance review efficiency and accuracy.
Participate in and execute predictive coding / Technology Assisted Review (TAR) workflows, including training the model, validating seed sets, reviewing machine-prioritized documents, and documenting model performance and QC metrics.
Produce and format document productions (native, TIFF/PDF image sets, OCR text, load files) in accordance with discovery protocols, meet production deadlines, and ensure TIFF/IMG settings, Bates numbering, and load file integrity are correct.
Prepare privilege logs, draft privilege entries, and perform privilege redaction reconciliations with legal counsel; escalate ambiguous or complex privilege issues for attorney review and maintain a privileged document tracking system.
Execute redaction, stamping, and annotation tasks on documents with appropriate tools and settings; ensure redactions are permanent and review production-quality images for errors or metadata leakage.
Review document metadata and system logs (file headers, last modified dates, custodian assignments) to support chain-of-custody, custodial timelines, and authenticity analyses that feed legal arguments or investigative timelines.
Conduct quality control (QC) and second-pass review of reviewer work, evaluate inter-reviewer consistency, identify coding drift, produce disagreement reports, and recommend retraining or updated instructions for review teams.
Manage reviewer work queues, triage high-priority or time-sensitive batches, and coordinate with project managers to reassign tasks and maintain throughput while meeting accuracy and defensibility standards.
Prepare detailed reviewer notes and issue memos to summarize patterns, hotspots, near-duplicates, custodial overlaps, and trends observed in document populations that inform case strategy.
Support collection and ingestion workflows by validating load file mappings, ensuring extracted text/OCR quality, reconciling custodians and data sources, and documenting chain-of-custody issues discovered during review.
Assist attorneys in identifying key documents for depositions, motion practice, or settlement negotiations by flagging high-value documents, preparing document bundles, and compiling annotated exhibits.
Maintain strict confidentiality and adhere to data privacy and security protocols (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA) when handling sensitive personal data; coordinate with security and legal teams on secure storage and data minimization for productions.
Collaborate with eDiscovery technologists and IT to troubleshoot platform performance, indexing errors, corrupted files, and to optimize review infrastructure, workspace searches, and permission settings.
Create and update case-specific playbooks, reviewer guides, and sample code documents to standardize review approaches and accelerate onboarding of temporary reviewers.
Track and report productivity and quality metrics (documents/hour, coding accuracy, disagreement rates, TAR recall/precision), prepare daily/weekly status reports for project managers, and recommend process improvements to meet budget and timeline constraints.
Conduct vendor and contract reviewer onboarding sessions, provide training on case-specific issues and platform usage, and monitor outsourced review teams to ensure alignment with client and firm expectations.
Participate in document triage and prioritization of custodial data, use early case assessment (ECA) analytics to identify hotspots and reduce review volumes, and work with analytics teams to leverage clustering, near-duplicate suppression, email threading, and concept searching.
Support regulatory and internal investigations by tracking key themes, timelines, and custodial communication patterns; assist investigators with document requests and rapid-response production preparation.
Engage in post-production validation to verify that produced sets match specified deliverables and that redactions, Bates ranges and metadata are accurately reflected in production load files.
Maintain and update knowledge of emerging eDiscovery best practices, legal developments affecting disclosure obligations, and vendor tool enhancements to continuously improve review defensibility and efficiency.
Perform ad hoc litigation support tasks such as exporting document sets for expert review, creating deposition bundles, and assisting with exhibit binders or court filing packages.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Assist with training materials and internal knowledge bases to accelerate onboarding of new reviewers.
Participate in cross-functional meetings with litigation teams, privacy officers, and compliance to align review outputs with legal strategy.
Assist in audits of review process and maintain documentation for defensibility in case of sanctions or court inquiries.
Help manage review vendor relationships, review SLA adherence, and conduct periodic performance assessments.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert user of document review platforms: Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull, Ringtail, Concordance, Nextpoint, or Reveal.
Practical experience with Technology Assisted Review (TAR) workflows, predictive coding, continuous active learning (CAL), and model validation.
Proficient in production creation: TIFF/PDF generation, Bates numbering, load file (DAT/OPT/CSV) creation, and quality verification.
Redaction and image handling expertise: permanent redaction, OCR quality checks, image-level annotation and stamping.
Strong metadata analysis skills: EXIF, file system metadata, email headers (To/From/Date/Subject), PST/OST handling, and custodian reconciliation.
Familiarity with eDiscovery ingestion and processing tools (Nuix, Relativity Processing, FTK, Clearwell) and troubleshooting import/index issues.
Experience with legal hold and collection documentation, chain-of-custody reporting, and custodian interview summaries.
Competent with search syntax and analytics: Boolean search, proximity operators, regex, conceptual searching, email threading, near-duplicate and clustering.
Ability to work with native file formats, extracted text, OCR outputs, and to verify text-to-image alignment for review accuracy.
Knowledge of privacy and data protection regulations relevant to document handling: GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and cross-border data transfer considerations.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for preparing reports, privilege logs, and reviewer metrics; advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP).
Familiarity with basic scripting/automation or using platform APIs for bulk updates, exports, or report generation is a plus (Python, Relativity APIs, SQL).
Experience preparing defensible privilege logs and coordinating privilege redaction workflows.

Soft Skills

Exceptional attention to detail and a methodical, evidence-based approach to coding and QC decisions.
Strong written and verbal communication skills to document coding rationales, prepare memos, and interact with attorneys and external vendors.
High level of confidentiality, integrity, and professionalism when handling sensitive legal, medical, or financial information.
Ability to manage competing priorities, work under tight deadlines, and sustain high throughput without compromising quality.
Analytical problem solving and critical thinking — able to identify patterns, root causes, and recommend process improvements.
Team-oriented with demonstrated ability to train, mentor, and motivate contract reviewers and junior staff.
Adaptability and comfort with fast-changing priorities in litigation, regulatory responses, or internal investigations.
Strong project management and organizational skills: effective time management, status reporting, and escalation practices.
Client-facing maturity: able to present findings, discuss production issues, and support attorney needs with professionalism.
Resilience and stress-tolerance when working in high-volume review environments or on time-sensitive productions.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Paralegal Studies, Legal Studies, Information Management, Computer Science, or related discipline; strong hiring consideration for relevant certificates or firm-specific training.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies, Information Systems, Computer Science, Data Analytics, or Paralegal certification; advanced legal technology certification or Relativity Certified User/Analyst preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Paralegal Studies
Information Systems / Computer Science
Legal Studies / Pre-law
Data Analytics / Information Management
Records Management / Library Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years in document review, eDiscovery, litigation support, or compliance review roles; larger matters or complex privilege/TAR experience may require 4–7+ years.

Preferred:

Demonstrated experience on litigation or regulatory matters with end-to-end document review responsibilities.
Prior use of multiple review platforms (Relativity/Everlaw/Logikcull) and hands-on TAR/predictive coding exposure.
Experience producing document productions and preparing privilege logs for multi-jurisdictional matters.

If you’d like, I can tailor this job description further for a specific industry (litigation, corporate investigations, contracts, or regulatory compliance), company size, or required platform proficiency (e.g., Relativity-only or cloud-native tools).