Issue: In January of 2023, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a proposed rule to ban noncompete agreements between employers and their “workers”, defined in this case to include employees, independent contractors, externs, interns, volunteers, apprentices, etc. This proposal was subject to public comment for a period of 60 days and resulted in approximately 30,000+ comments related to opinions on the proposal. As part of the process, each of these comments required review and if necessary, tagged for further measures accordingly.

After our solution: The Paralegal Team at SIG was able to efficiently and accurately review the provided comments based on the criteria set forth by the FTC by using the legal software program Relativity. The team carefully reviewed each comment and determined the proper “tag” for the comment based on its nature. Once the task was completed, the 30,000+ comments were organized and presented in a way the FTC could effectively move forward in their comment review process.

Benefit: By using the skillset of the SIG Paralegal Team, the FTC was able to increase the efficiency in which the public comments on the proposal were processed. Tagging each comment based on its nature resulted in a complete and organized dataset that could be dispersed appropriately to the Team at the FTC. A proper knowledge base, efficiency, accuracy, and organization were key to creating a result that was beneficial in moving the public comment process forward for the Agency.