Case management ediscovery checklist

A comprehensive framework for ediscovery 

From legal hold through post-production, the decisions you make at each stage of a matter shape the cost, speed, and outcome of discovery. This checklist from Nextpoint's Client Success team gives your team a comprehensive, phase-by-phase framework — so nothing falls through the cracks.

Five reasons to download this checklist:

1. Get ahead of key dates before discovery begins
   Legal hold issue dates, collection deadlines, review kickoff, production deadlines — missing any one of them creates downstream problems that are hard to recover from. This checklist helps your team map every critical milestone at the outset, so you're managing the matter, not reacting to it.
   
2. Issue and manage legal holds that actually hold up
   A legal hold is only as good as its enforcement. This checklist walks you through drafting, issuing, and tracking hold notices — including custodian reminders, compliance follow-up, and what happens when a custodian leaves mid-matter. No more spoliation exposure from hold management gaps.
   
3. Map every data source — employer and employee controlled
   Email servers, SharePoint, mobile devices, personal cloud storage, legacy systems — the checklist covers the full range of employer and employee-controlled data sources so you know exactly what exists, where it lives, and how to get to it before collection begins.
   
4. Plan your review workflow before documents hit the platform
   Who's conducting first-pass review? How will privilege be handled? What culling methods will you apply? Answering these questions early — not mid-review — keeps your team aligned and your costs in check. This checklist covers deduplication, data culling, review parameters, and production format decisions all in one place.
   
5. Close out matters cleanly with post-production planning
   Most checklists stop at production. This one doesn't. It walks you through loading opposing counsel productions and transcripts into your review platform, and deciding whether data should stay online, go offline, or be archived — so your matter wraps up as organized as it started. 

A detailed case management plan is one of the highest-leverage investments you can make at the start of a matter. It makes ediscovery more efficient, reduces disputes, and gets your team to the most relevant information faster — saving your clients time and money.