Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/43390
USE THE RIGHT RESOURCES The work involved in conducting discovery can be done by many different people: By employees of the organizations involved in the litigation (within the law department, the IT group, or the business units); by the parties' outside counsel and their support staff; and by service providers and vendors. The expense of discovery can be kept down by making sure that all work being done is assigned to the appropriate resource. Litigants should keep in mind that the "right" resource is not always the cheapest one, as sometimes a resource with a higher rate is the best choice if the work can be accomplished quickly and accurately. Similarly, when dealing with outside service providers and vendors, the least expense option might not be a good choice if the reputation of the provider is questionable or there is doubt about the quality of its work. Also, no resource is free. Deploying in-house resources still costs an organization time, energy and possible lost opportunities, so the organization may be better off paying an outside resource to do the discovery work and allowing the internal resource(s) to focus on work of higher value to the organization. When evaluating and comparing the cost of different resources, be careful to compare "apples to apples." If a litigant solicits proposals from outside vendors for a particular project, the request should detail as precisely as possible what products and services are needed, and specify the format in which Achieving "Quality" in Discovery: A Two-Part Process A 36 successful outcome in litigation often depends on the quality of the discovery process and work product. Two related, but distinct, techniques are essential to effective discovery — quality control and quality testing. Quality control refers to the steps taken during discovery to generate a quality work product. Quality control involves actively searching for systemic errors, correcting those errors (known as "remediation") and revising the process to eliminate the systemic errors. In theory, reviewing 100 percent of the work would be the ideal way to ensure quality, but that approach is simply too costly and impractical. Instead, effective Corporate Law Departments ILTA White Paper quality control creates the most benefit within the time available at an appropriate budget. Too much time spent on quality control blows the budget; not enough leads to poor results. The best process managers strike that delicate balance to ensure the highest quality within the given limitations. An efficient, well-designed quality control process maximizes the likelihood of finding any systemic mistakes while minimizing the time spent on it. Mistakes happen in any sizable discovery process. But blindly grabbing random samples of work product is not only inefficient, it will most likely not identify systemic problems that require larger corrective steps.