Mistakes happen in eDiscovery – The real test is how PMs handle them.

In ILTA’s Just-In-Time podcast episode, “What Makes a Great eDiscovery PM”, moderator James MacGregor, Founder & Managing Director of Ethical eDiscovery, and Dina K. Hetherington, Founder of DKH Legal Tech Consulting, talk about what separates solid eDiscovery project management from great eDiscovery project management.

One theme that stands out:

Mistakes are inevitable. The difference is in how you respond.

This article builds on that conversation and looks at how great eDiscovery PMs handle mistakes, protect their matters, and build trust with clients – and where tools like Lupl can quietly reduce the risk and the blast radius when something goes wrong.

Why mistakes are inevitable in eDiscovery

Even with strong teams and good processes, eDiscovery is a perfect storm for errors:

• Speed and pressure. Tight court or regulator deadlines, last-minute scope changes, and late-arriving data.
• Technical complexity. New data types, evolving mobile and chat sources, and constant software updates.
• Volume. Large datasets, multiple review passes, and intricate production requirements.
• Human factors. Hand-offs between teams, changing staffing, and fatigue on long matters.

That combination means things will occasionally slip:

• The wrong production set is exported.
• A search term was misconfigured.
• A document family was partially omitted.
• A QC check wasn’t applied consistently.

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is to detect issues early, communicate clearly, and recover without breaking trust.

The worst response: hide it and hope

On the podcast, the speakers referenced a point that’s familiar to litigators: when a mistake happens, trying to quietly fix it or cover it up is usually the most damaging path.

In eDiscovery, cover-ups hurt you in three ways:

1. Risk compounds. A quiet patch can introduce new inconsistencies (e.g., two slightly different productions) that are harder to explain later.
2. Trust erodes. When a client or court eventually uncovers the trail, the original mistake is less of a problem than the lack of transparency.
3. You lose the learning moment. The team never gets to fix the underlying process, so the same error repeats.

Great PMs know that, in eDiscovery, sunlight is cheaper than surprise.

What great eDiscovery PMs do instead

From the discussion, you can sketch a pattern for how the best eDiscovery PMs handle mistakes:

1. They recognize and acknowledge the issue quickly

• They treat unexpected results, odd counts, or weird gaps as signals worth investigating.
• Once confirmed, they don’t wait for the “perfect” explanation – they flag that an issue exists, then refine the details.

What this sounds like:

“We’ve identified a potential issue with yesterday’s production set. We’re validating scope now and will share a precise impact and fix options within the hour.”

2. They explain the impact in plain language

Instead of burying the problem in technical jargon, they:

• Describe what happened,
• Outline what’s affected and what isn’t, and
• Frame why it matters in litigation or regulatory terms.

Example:

“One of the production exports excluded a subset of mobile messages from Custodian A between March and April. The review is complete; the issue is in the export step, so we don’t need to re-review – we need to re-export and re-serve that slice.”

3. They present options, not drama

Rather than just saying “we made a mistake”, they bring options with consequences:

“Option 1: Correct and re-serve to the other side by Friday; risk is manageable but we’ll need to inform them.”

“Option 2: Inform the court and propose a revised timetable; more transparent but creates a formal record.”

This gives litigators and clients a real choice between speed, formality, and risk appetite.

4. They document, adjust, and move on

Finally, they:

• Capture what went wrong and how it was fixed.
• Add or adjust a QC step, checklist item, or template for future matters.
• Share the lesson with the wider team, especially juniors, without turning it into a blame exercise.

The result: the mistake is contained, the relationship is preserved, and the firm quietly improves its playbook.

Building a culture where people can admit mistakes

None of the above works if people are afraid to raise their hand.

On the podcast, Dina described making a point of sharing her own mistakes with her team, so they felt safe surfacing theirs. That simple move changes behaviour: instead of “fix it quietly”, the reflex becomes “flag it early and get help.”

A healthy eDiscovery culture usually includes:

• Peer QC, not solo heroics. PMs check each other’s work; reviewers audit batches; no one is left alone on critical steps.
• Coaching over punishment. Innocent errors become teaching moments, not career-limiting events.
• Clear expectations. Teams understand that owning the issue is valued more than never making one.

Tools can’t create that culture on their own. But they can make it much easier to see work, share context, and catch issues before they snowball.

How Lupl reduces risk

Most eDiscovery and disputes teams still run part of the process in Word checklists, Excel trackers, and long email threads. That’s where risk creeps in: missed steps, stale versions, or silent changes that only live in one person’s inbox.

Lupl gives you a shared workspace to reduce that risk and make mistakes easier to catch and fix:

• Workstreams as structured checklists. Turn your discovery playbook into a Lupl template with explicit stages, tasks, and QC steps. When something goes wrong, you can see exactly which step needs adjusting instead of reconstructing it from memory.
• Clear ownership and due dates. Each task has an owner and a date. If a critical export or QC task goes overdue, it’s visible – not buried on someone’s personal to-do list.
• Real-time visibility for leads. Matter leaders can see progress and blockers across the discovery workstream without waiting for manual status reports, making it easier to spot anomalies early.
• DMS-native documents with deep links. Lupl connects to iManage, NetDocuments, and Microsoft 365 so documents stay in your DMS, while checklists and status live in Lupl. You reduce the risk of “wrong version” attachments or outdated links.
• A natural audit trail. When you adjust a date, add a QC step, or reassign a task after an issue, the changes are captured in one place. That makes it simpler to explain what happened – internally or externally – and to prove that you’ve tightened the process.

The goal isn’t to claim, “no mistakes, ever”. It’s to make your default working environment one where:

• Fewer things slip through the cracks, and
• When something does, the pathway to fixing it is obvious.

Why this matters to clients and stakeholders

From a client’s perspective, the question isn’t “Did you run a flawless project?” – it’s:

• “Did you spot issues early?”
• “Did you tell us clearly what was going on?”
• “Do we feel confident that lessons are actually captured for next time?”

Great eDiscovery PMs earn that confidence by pairing the right habits with the right tools: transparent communication, structured workflows, and a workspace that supports both.

The takeaway

Mistakes in eDiscovery are not an edge case – they’re a feature of high-pressure, high-volume work.

The PMs James and Dina describe don’t succeed because nothing ever goes wrong. They succeed because when something does go wrong, they:

• Acknowledge it quickly;
• Communicate impact in plain English;
• Offer clear options; and
• Fold the lesson back into the way the team works.

Platforms like Lupl help make that mindset operational: turning ad hoc checklists into shared workflows, giving leaders live visibility, and making it easier to prove – to yourselves and your clients – that you handle the inevitable bumps with a steady hand.