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Subject Expert
1) are you slow? If so, you should. Just make sure it doesn’t become 100% of your work. I was asked if I wanted to do doc review when I was slow, and it was a godsend. Do 0 now.
2) yes. You can do this while watching tv.
Enthusiast
Easy hours.
Doc review is great if you aren’t already too busy and need more hours! I will say some can be more complicated/involves then others based on the coding the partners need. But generally it isn’t too difficult and is a nice break from more substantive work.
Partner at a firm you are already employed at? Do you regularly work directly for this partner?
Should you? Depends.
Pros? Easy billables, easier to do from home, mindless.
Cons? Boring, depending on volume of documents not very educational or useful, depending on on volume and time frame to complete, can take away or get you behind from other more substantive work.
Doc review is not that different from any other legal work. Very easy to do remote just like most legal work. If you have time, take it. The way the summer looks I would take any hours.
I will disagree. It is one thing to be able to cut and paste. It can be quite different interpreting and knowing what to look for in docs that someone else has drafted.
We need to know more about your role and title to advise. Sounds like you’re not a litigation associate. If you’re being asked to doc review and you’re not a junior litigator presumably you need more hours.
What type of doc review? I do litigation so for me doc review is either reviewing medical records and summarizing or reviewing employee files and summarizing
Coach
Def easy hours but it makes me feel worthless and hate my life bc it’s so boring so I avoid it at all costs
I actually just volunteered for a doc review project this week that’s outside my normal practice group because I’ve been slow the last few months and need to get my hours up. Just check what kind of documents you’d be reviewing to get a sense of how annoying it will be. If you are stuck reviewing a bunch of financial spreadsheets (and need to open each as a native Excel spreadsheet and click through all the individual tabs) or long PowerPoint documents, that can be annoying. It also depends whether you are reviewing incoming documents or documents that your client will be producing. If you are producing the documents, then sometimes there can be complicated privilege/confidentiality calls you need to make. Also, ask what the time commitment will be (hours per week and how long the project will last). Often, I end up doing normal work during work hours, then doc review at night or on weekends.
If you have low hours, it is hard to say no. If you don’t care to make partner, go for it. If it’s not 50% of your time, fine. But if you want to make partner or your hours are fine, and you have access to ANY other assignments, don’t do doc review. Sign up for anything else that is more substantive. In my experience, associates who have been on large doc review projects get signed up for the next doc review project, and next thing you know they are the doc review associate, which is fine until you want to become partner or move in-house and your primary experience has been doc review.