Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | L I T I G A T I O N A N D P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T 44 and clients are less likely to (or less successful in) rejecting these expenses. This we believe will become even more crucial in the foreseeable future. Internal soft costs, those driven by investments in technology and talent, are much more prone to be disputed by attorneys and clients as these are regarded as overhead by some and "a cost of doing business." The top 3 billing points clients most commonly refuse to pay include data hosting, data processing and hard copy imaging – most of which are currently performed in-house by firms. The Survey results also highlighted some challenges. For instance, the cost of keeping pace with technology from the perspective of the time investment wading through the variety of available applications, the question of whether on-prem vs. hosted software solutions best meet a firm's needs as well as testing, implementing, training and providing ongoing support. Of course, there's also the financial investment in technology, upgrades to hardware and the solutions themselves. Again, this will become even more of an issue as firms pivot to a pandemic cash conservation mode. Another challenge cited by firms is the tug-of- war between attorney needs for a quick turnaround on ESI processing and ingestion into a review platform against the reality that some collections far exceed in-house capabilities. The strategies deployed by firms to address these challenges varied, with Survey results showing that firms approach this in one of three models: 1) A case-by-case basis and engaging a preferred, off-site vendor for larger collections. These firms, which account for 56% of respondents, maintain in-house IT or Litigation Support talent capable of processing small to mid-sized collections utilizing firm infrastructure and applications. 2) Outsourcing on-site talent for moderately sized work and leveraging their off-site infrastructure for larger projects, thereby shifting the time and cost burden in keeping current with technology away from the firm. 13% of respondents rely on this model. 3) Hybrid of these two models are employed by 31% of firms, where a core group of IT or Litigation Support professionals project manage and/or carry out some finishing touches in a project, such as importing the final product into their review application and quality checking. The balance of their on- site team is outsourced to manage the bulk of processing activities. The three key drivers cited by firms that elected to outsource their Litigation Support departments include ease of expense recovery from clients (46%), ability to leverage expertise as opposed to developing in-house (31%), and data security risk mitigation (23%). We also found billing models to vary, with some firms structuring client chargeback similar to 3rd party vendors by way of utilizing a per GB rate for data processing and hosting. Others include hourly fees to cover time spent by Litigation Support, IT, paralegal staff and some extend this to include project management efforts. Most firms also apply a threshold, typically set to 1 GB, before entertaining cost recovery. The use of contract attorneys in document review was rare not too long ago but we're finding that nearly three quarters of firms now rely on this as a strategy. Firms cite the obvious benefit that contract attorneys deliver the ability to scale resources during discovery while avoiding ongoing labor expenses. Whether firms continue to employ

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