Measure twice, cut once! Are you measuring for success?

Most of us have heard this old English proverb many times. My grandfather who was a carpenter used to say it all the time, and not just in connection with building cabinets, which is what he did for a living for almost 50 years. It simply refers to double checking your measurements before you cut something to prevent wasting material. That makes sense doesn’t it? If you cut something too short, you can’t uncut it. The damage is done if you’re off the mark.


In the legal biz, we have historically not been too keen on measurements. Success or failure has been our yardstick. Either you win, or you lose. Here’s another proverb – “You’re only as good as your last trial.” We have historically not had measuring mechanisms in the legal industry, so outside of the result, there has not been many measurements. Not a lot of accountability for eliminating waste. All of that has changed. With technology, we have lots ways to measure, as an example, a document review. Anyone associated with review today knows there is a great deal of wasted effort. After all, in a case of any size, there are only so many documents that can be used at deposition or at trial. Yet, there is a great deal of information to sort through. Document review and the associated discovery is the major cost component of any piece of litigation. Are your lawyers measuring and controlling wasted effort? Here are but a few of the many things that can be measured.

• Culling Rates – What is being eliminated prior to review and at what rate? What are the duplication rates? Do you know?

• Documents Decisions Per Hour (DDH) – The rate at which a reviewer or group of reviewers review documents. Measuring this rate will tell you how much a review will cost. The slower the review, the more it will cost. What is the speed of your review, what will it cost at the current rate, and when will the review complete? Do you know?

• Response Rate – A traditional review everything process will generally yield very low responsive rates - 10% - 15% at best, meaning 85 – 95% of what is being reviewed is wasted effort. Whereas, when a sound culling methodology is used, a much higher percentage of what gets reviewed actually ends up being responsive. Do you know what your responsive rate and how much of the effort is wasted on the unimportant?

• Quality – Measuring the quality of a review is critical in conducting on the spot training for those who need it and eliminating those that are not successful. What is the project error rate, do you know?

There are obviously many other things that can be measured, but the above four are critical. How are you measuring the progress of your project?