publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/518940
ILTA WHITE PAPER: MAY 2015 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 8 BENEFITS OF MEASURING E-DISCOVERY METRICS • Determine Future Investments: Historical metrics around e-discovery provide the information and input necessary to help a company determine how to spend proactively on process and technology to better measure future e-discovery costs and limit future spending. • Improve Processes and Quality: You cannot make improvements without knowing the details. Defining and tracking metrics makes it much easier to control the e-discovery process and make informed staffing decisions. For example, if a case is escalating and going to require a full-scale review, and there are only 30 days to the production deadline, the best strategy might be to apply analytics and a technology-assisted review workflow early in the process, and then conduct a quality control check with the most effective reviewers. Advances in e-discovery software technology make it possible to assess the most cost-effective option before a single piece of data has been collected. historical experience. The legal team must quickly and accurately assess all potential outcomes, issues that might arise and different cost scenarios in order to formulate "try-or-settle" strategies. One of the most problematic parts of pre-litigation activity is trying to assess e-discovery strategies, because metrics and costs are not typically tracked in a way that makes it easy to extract the information. Deterred by uncertainty and complexity, many companies tend to overreact and deploy "collect everything" strategies. This only adds to the potential issues encountered during e-discovery and increases costs. Without clearly defined metrics and measurements, managing these growing data volumes during discovery is (and will continue to be) extremely challenging and could result in unnecessary overspending. WHY METRICS MATTER The inherent benefits of tracking and keeping historical metrics for e-discovery is simple: to control and predict risks and costs associated with litigation. E-discovery metrics enable legal teams to: • Explain What Happened: Metrics around data preservation, collection, processing, review and production should be known upfront and can be very important for demonstrating defensibility before a judge. Having these metrics can also help defend against overly broad discovery requests, proactively negotiate e-discovery terms and avoid cost overruns during collections, processing, hosting and review. More important, tracking metrics from case to case can arm the legal team with historical data and current facts to make informed decisions about case strategy, negotiation tactics and staffing assignments (internal and external). • Budget More Effectively: Over time, having a tracking system in place allows organizations to catalogue data volumes by custodian or case type, collection speeds, deduplication rates, recall and precision, date spans, file types, file locations and, downstream, reviewer effectiveness and timelines. Having this historical data readily available in the e-discovery system arms internal and external stakeholders and counsel with the facts needed to understand case values upfront, justify technology investments and plan and schedule case tasks much more effectively. Tracking metrics from case to case can arm the legal team with historical data and current facts to make informed decisions about case strategy, negotiation tactics and staffing assignments.