TAR and AI-assisted review questions to settle before the workflow gets hard to explain.

Use this as a kickoff agenda for scoping, sampling, review controls, validation, and stakeholder communication. It is practical by design and educational only.

Checklist

Scope and Protocol

Make the workflow explainable before the review starts.

What population is in scope, and what has been excluded?
Which review decisions will train or update the system?
What privilege, confidentiality, or issue-coding rules need special handling?
What review decisions should require senior reviewer or attorney confirmation?
What protocol language will describe the TAR or AI-assisted review method?

Sampling and Metrics

Decide which numbers the team will rely on and how they will be explained.

What sample will estimate prevalence or richness before review begins?
Will the team use a control set, validation sample, elusion sample, or rolling QC sample?
What confidence level and margin of error are appropriate for the matter?
How will recall, elusion, precision, richness, and culling impact be calculated?
Which metric ranges need to be shared with counsel, clients, or opposing parties?

Model and Review Controls

Keep human decisions, system behavior, and review drift visible.

Who can code training documents, overturn decisions, or change classification rules?
How will inconsistent reviewer coding be detected and resolved?
What audit trail will preserve coding decisions, model updates, exports, and QC events?
How will the team handle family members, near duplicates, threads, and attachments?
What happens when new data arrives after the workflow has started?

Validation and Stopping

Agree on defensible stopping conditions before pressure builds.

What validation result would support stopping, continuing, or changing the workflow?
What elusion threshold or recall range is acceptable for the matter context?
How will missed responsive documents be sampled, categorized, and escalated?
What final QC will check privilege, issue coverage, family completeness, and production readiness?
What memo, report, or chart will explain the final decision?

Communication and Deliverables

Prepare the artifacts that make the workflow easier to defend later.

What assumptions should be documented for population size, prevalence, sampling, and review burden?
What needs to be preserved for meet-and-confer discussions or later challenge?
Who receives weekly status updates, and which metrics should appear in them?
What plain-language explanation will attorneys use with clients or the court?
What lessons learned should be captured before the team closes the matter?

Preserve the record

Artifacts to leave behind when the matter closes.

The most useful TAR work is usually the work the team can reconstruct. These documents make the decisions easier to explain later.

Review protocol or workflow memo
Sampling plan and randomization notes
Training and QC decision log
Validation results with assumptions
Final defensibility summary

Next step

Turn the answers into numbers and references.

Use the calculator library for prevalence, recall, elusion, richness, precision, and culling questions, then pull resource references when you need supporting authority.

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