The primary difficulties encountered by most US attorneys during the Document Review phase have to do with non-English language documents. If your lawyer can't read the documents, he can't evaluate them for their legal significance. One solution to the problem is to have all non-English documents translated. However, the cost of about US$ 50,00 per page often renders this option impractical.
Another option is to have someone fluent in both languages first describe the contents of the documents to your lawyer and then, at his request, read the foreign language documents to him in English. This option is often viable when the number of documents is less than a few tens of thousands of pages.
When the number of pages of non-English documents exceeds 100,000, the creation of a searchable Database quickly becomes the most efficient method of making the non-English document population accessible to your US lawyer. By employing recent law graduates or paralegals locally to read and summarise the non-English documents into the Database, the US lawyer is in a much better position to determine whether he needs additional verbal explanation by the local lawyer or even a complete translation for possible use in court (See also Translating). The Database has the added advantage of retaining all elements of analysis, including the initial summaries as well as the later impressions of your US lawyers all in an accessible, searchable format for continuing analysis.
Even when the pure language problem has been dealt with, the problem of differing legal concepts remains. While a number of good legal dictionaries are available, experience in working in both the civil law environment of continental Europe as well as the common law environment of the US can be of considerable value. Even within European languages this problem can be more than you bargained for. As an example, consider the differences between the Dutch term "Raad van Bestuur" which under Belgium law means a supervisory organ above management (yet not really the same as a US Board of Directors ) and which under Dutch law refers to an executive management committee, an all insiders organ.