Two main types of situations in which masses, and I do mean hundreds or more, of emails have been given to me as legal counsel to review: adversary in litigation responds to discovery request, and the other is, client provides "universe" of emails for decisions about what needs to be produced in discovery, and about possible confidentiality grounds for withholding.
Sometimes, as an employment law practitioner a third review type occurs - an employee is in a "job in jeopardy" jam, or even getting fired, and his or her entire computer(s)' worth of emails (and everything else) gets examined, sometimes microscopically.
And time and again, especially in that third situation type, impressions would filter into the tasks of understanding the communications and integrating them into the factual narrative of who did what to whom. That is, where context was lacking, the reviewer would end up....filling it in. Sometimes based on experience, sometimes just guessing, sometimes magical or wishful thinking.
For this batch of emails released by Boeing, context for much of which seems quite lacking, I'd want to see ALL of the communications on the pertinent subject areas. Maybe the federal authorities did receive a lot more than what Boeing has made public. And maybe when the Flyers' Rights FOIA lawsuit against FAA moves ahead (court stuff was scheduled for early this coming week), more impetus for more public disclosure will result. Regardless, the process of reconfiguring the certification process, not to mention resolving the grounding, demands a comprehensive disclosure.