An Am Law 100 firm engaged Sandline to support a corporate client in an employment dispute involving hundreds of gigabytes and a review population of more than 87,000 documents.
The firm needed a review strategy that would control costs and accelerate the timeline without compromising defensibility. Sandline provided end-to-end support, including data collection, processing and hosting in RelativityOne, project management, analytics consulting, and a seasoned document review team.
By combining email threading, Continuous Active Learning, elusion testing, and targeted human review, Sandline reduced the manual review population by 42.2%.
Employment disputes often require legal teams to evaluate large volumes of email and other communications within compressed timelines. In this matter, counsel needed to quickly identify responsive information while maintaining confidence that potentially relevant documents were not being overlooked.
The initial review population consisted of 87,151 documents. Reviewing every document individually would have increased costs and extended the review timeline.
Sandline worked closely with counsel to design a layered workflow that aligned the available technology, review resources, and risk tolerance with the needs of the matter.
Sandline does not rely on technology alone. Our project managers, analytics consultants, and review professionals worked as an extension of the legal team to develop and manage a defensible review process from collection through completion.
The workflow incorporated three primary components.
1. Reduce Redundancy Through Email Threading
Sandline first applied email threading to group related communications and identified the most complete versions of each conversation.
This reduced the population from 87,151 documents to 61,760 documents, eliminating the need to separately review repetitive content contained within email chains.
2. Prioritize Relevant Documents With Continuous Active Learning
Of the post-threading population:
51,646 documents were eligible for Continuous Active Learning
10,114 documents were not TAR-eligible and required traditional review
The review team’s coding decisions continuously trained the CAL model. As the model learned, it prioritized documents that were more likely to be responsive, allowing reviewers to focus first on the information most likely to matter.
Sandline’s analytics consultants monitored the workflow and worked with counsel to evaluate when the remaining population could be tested.
After the population passed elusion testing, counsel approved the mass coding of 11,430 documents as non-responsive.
3. Pair Analytics With Experienced Human Review
The technology-assisted workflow was supported by a seasoned review team responsible for reviewing the CAL-prioritized population and all TAR-ineligible documents.
The team manually reviewed:
- 40,216 TAR-eligible documents prioritized through CAL
- 10,114 TAR-ineligible documents
- 50,330 documents in total
This approach ensured that documents outside the CAL model were fully addressed while allowing counsel to benefit from the efficiencies of advanced analytics.
Sandline’s layered strategy reduced the manual review requirement from 87,151 documents to 50,330 documents.
| Review Stage | Document Count |
| Initial review population | 87,151 |
| Population after email threading | 61,760 |
| TAR-eligible population | 51,646 |
| TAR-ineligible population | 10,114 |
| Documents eliminated after elusion testing | 11,430 |
| Final linear reviewed population | 50,330 |
| Documents removed from linear review | 36,821 |
| Overall reduction in linear review | 42.2% |
The workflow eliminated the need to manually review 36,821 documents, helping counsel reduce review costs and move through the population more efficiently.
By layering email threading, Continuous Active Learning, elusion testing, and experienced human review, Sandline delivered a process that balanced cost efficiency with defensibility.
The legal team and end client benefited from:
- A 42.2% reduction in manual review
- Faster identification of potentially responsive documents
- Reduced review costs
- Full review of documents that were not eligible for TAR
- A documented and validated stopping point supported by elusion testing
Consistent support across collection, processing, hosting, analytics, project management, and review
Sandline’s role extended beyond providing technology or staffing reviewers. Our team took ownership of the complete workflow, adapting the strategy as the review progressed and ensuring that the technology, people, and process remained aligned.
Through a consultative and hands-on approach, Sandline helped counsel achieve meaningful efficiencies while maintaining confidence in the quality and defensibility of the review.
