Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | I N F O R M A T I O N G O V E R N E N C E 70 Even when cases do not necessarily rely on the same documents, they often implicate the same "frequent flyer" custodians. repositories, social networking, and other off-network endpoints. But true control of eDiscovery means taking advantage of the scalability and efficiencies of the cloud to the maximum extent possible. 2. Centralize eDiscovery processes and data The concept of an increasing return to scale is no less applicable in the eDiscovery context than it is in every other business context – simply put, when output increases proportionately more than input, your average cost goes down. That is the precise rationale behind centralizing eDiscovery processes and data management. Centralization, particularly in the form of multi- matter management, offers two principal returns to scale, along with other ancillary benefits. Many litigants, especially serial litigants, see the same exact documents being preserved, collected, processed, and hosted across multiple litigations. There are two reasons for this phenomenon. First, different cases often derive from the selfsame issues – one glaring example in American jurisprudence is asbestos litigation. Every case involves substantially the same issue and, more importantly from the eDiscovery perspective, encompasses essentially the same documents. Second, even when cases do not necessarily rely on the same documents, they often implicate the same "frequent flyer" custodians. Unless those custodians are fastidious in their ESI organization, many of the same documents will be collected from muddled email boxes, across even differing litigations. With the availability of hash de-duplication, centralization means that only one copy of the document (specifically, document family) will be maintained regardless of the number of cases in which that document may have been collected, and may ultimately need to be produced – an obvious increasing return to scale. Taking that scenario one step further, distributive eDiscovery practices would also require the same document to be reviewed and coded multiple times, at significant cost, and potentially inconsistently. Consider, for example, a technolo company with 10,000 technical documents related to a chip set used in multiple products. By the time 50 lawsuits have been filed, the review of those documents could cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000. And, since reviewers tend to agree less than half the time, there is a substantial likelihood that the same document will be coded differently across the various cases. Centralization minimizes the cost and inconsistency of review. In the foregoing example, only one copy of the 10,000 documents would be maintained, and it would be reviewed and coded once (eliminating inconsistency) – at a cost of $10,000 and a savings of $490,000. And even if the cases did not warrant wholly identical coding, certain review criteria (such as confidentiality, privacy, and privilege) could be coded once, because they rely primarily on the inherent nature of the documents, rather than the particular litigation. With sufficient forethought, that approach could even be extended to distinctive attributes, so that core documents could be coded only once for their litigation-specific characteristics (e.g., trade secrets, pharmaceutical compounds, intellectual property), and managed appropriately in downstream 5 S T R A T E G I E S F O R E F F E C T I V E C O N T R O L A N D O V E R S I G H T O F E D I S C O V E R Y S P E N D

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