publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/518940
ILTA WHITE PAPER: MAY 2015 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 9 • Average turnaround time and cost-per-custodian all-in and broken down by: − Preservation − Collection − Processing and hosting − Review − Production • Average recall and precision numbers broken down based on applied filtering percentages APPLY METRICS HERE It's one thing to talk about metrics; it's another to apply them. Metrics can be applied to reduce e-discovery scope and costs in the following areas: Meet and Confers: This is best explained in the two scenarios below. Scenario One: After performing diligence and reasonable inquiry with a client, 10 custodians are identified as likely to have relevant information to respond to discovery. During the meet and confer, the requesting party requests the collection, processing, review and production of 100 custodians. Understanding the turnaround time and costs associated with the original 10 custodians versus the requesting party's 100 will go a long way in guiding the proportionality and burden discussions. For BENEFITS OF MEASURING E-DISCOVERY METRICS GATHER AND REPEAT At the outset of a case, legal teams rarely have access to historical metrics that enable them to project potential e-discovery costs. After the collection, processing and review of the data are completed, e-discovery costs usually break down as followings: • The cost of collecting electronically stored information (ESI) • The cost of processing and hosting data from its native format into a format that can be loaded into a document review system • The cost of reviewing the data for responsiveness and privilege • The cost of producing responsive, non-privileged ESI The challenge with this approach is that all measurements and metrics are gathered after the processes are completed, limiting early-stage decision-making and budgeting control. This also does not allow you to consider cost-savings that can be applied much earlier in the process during the identification and preservation stages. Legal teams should rethink when and how they can utilize metrics. With the right historical metrics, the scope of discovery can be reduced early in the case life cycle, well before the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) Rule 16 Scheduling Conference. Having defensible metrics to present to the court when arguing how long discovery will take or how much it will cost can be invaluable in arguing a party's position in the conference. This capability is also especially critical for building proportionality and cost burden arguments, with the results directly affecting what needs to be collected and reviewed for the case. Does your organization have the following metrics gathered from historical matters? • Average number of custodians by type of case (key custodians versus secondary or tertiary custodians) • Average volume of data potentially requiring collection per custodian (whether full collection, targeted collection or hybrid approach) − Variances whether corporate versus field custodians are involved − Variances based on the type of data required for collection (email versus non-email versus structured data) • Average filtering percentages (and the levers affecting filtering percentages, e.g., use of email thread suppression, removal of custom file-type exclusion)