Chapter 29: The Review I Could Not Control
The only review worth requesting was one I would not be allowed to manage.
On Thursday morning, Priya turned her WCT office screen toward me and opened the latest terms-of-reference draft.
Dana sat beside me while the WCT board secretary controlled the version history from a separate terminal.
Three trustees had proposed a desktop review supervised by WCT counsel.
Their version would let counsel select documents, collect written answers, and prepare a confidential summary before deciding what the trustees were ultimately permitted to see.
It would be faster, cheaper, and almost impossible for the public to test.
A counsel-controlled summary could look independent on a donor page while leaving every disputed choice inside the institution.
“They will say confidentiality protects employees,” Priya said.
“Employee protection is necessary,” I replied. “Client control over the answer is not.”
I could not demand independence while reserving a private route to shape it.
The first deletion was mine.
The draft called me founding requester and permitted my approval of factual conclusions involving Northline.
I struck the approval clause.
“If the report criticizes your firm, you receive it on the same terms as any other affected party, without advance edits from you,” Dana said.
“Yes.”
The secretary entered the change with my name attached.
Priya asked who should choose the reviewer's conclusions.
“The reviewer.”
“Who decides what appears in the final report?”
“Not me, WCT counsel, WMG management, or the Whitmore family.”
The answer did not eliminate lawful redaction, privilege review, or employee privacy.
It prevented those protections from becoming a client rewrite right.
That distinction protected legitimate secrets while leaving the findings outside the client's control.
We moved to evidence access.
The desktop proposal allowed counsel to hand the reviewer a curated packet.
I replaced that sentence with a future contractual right to request records directly from the proper entity custodian rather than through a packet selected by family counsel.
Any access would begin only after selection, separate entity scope approval, authorized signatures, and an effective engagement.
Before then, no bidder could read a record.
Priya added matching language for WCT materials and flagged the company portion for Daphne's separate board process.
One document could describe coordination without pretending WCT controlled WMG.
The future contract would have to trace every request back to the entity that lawfully held the material.
Witnesses presented the harder problem.
The trustees' draft required counsel to approve every interview subject.
That would let the institution decide which people existed for purposes of the review.
I requested an independent witness channel protected from management screening.
The future reviewer, not I, would decide whom to contact and whether any account warranted testing.
I could submit my own records and testify under the same rules.
I could not build the witness list.
The secretary inserted a prohibition on retaliation and a route for independent attorney contact.
Priya then added a public methods summary.
It would explain sources, sampling limits, verification steps, redaction categories, and unresolved questions without exposing protected identities.
The client could respond to findings but could not delete conclusions or bury the methodology.
Affected parties could challenge accuracy in a visible response without receiving a private veto.
“You understand this can name your failures,” Priya said.
The cursor waited after her sentence.
“That is part of the reason it cannot belong to me.”
She entered my answer into the drafting record.
Priya adopted the three conditions for the proposal: direct custodian requests after lawful engagement, an independent witness channel, and a public methods summary for bids.
Her action fixed the language she would sponsor, not the result of any board vote.
No reviewer had been selected, hired, or authorized to inspect evidence.
The WCT board secretary released the next day's special-meeting agenda while we were still in the room.
External review appeared second.
The first vote would decide whether Andrew's memorial fund stopped.