Extract from Dave Ruel’s article “7 Ways to Reduce Ediscovery Costs”
There’s no way around it: ediscovery can be expensive. With the constantly expanding universe of data—and the continually growing variety of business applications giving rise to new data formats and new ediscovery challenges—legal teams face considerable challenges in managing their ediscovery budgets. When an organization needs to conduct an investigation or respond to the threat of litigation, combing through its data to identify and eventually produce relevant information consumes considerable time and money.
But there are things you can do to control the costs of ediscovery. Here are seven straightforward (though perhaps not easy) ways to reduce ediscovery costs.
1) Be a good governor of your organization’s information.
The less data you have to manage through the ediscovery process, the lower your costs. By extension, then, the less data your organization retains, the lower your overall ediscovery budget can be. Implementing a retention policy is a good way to reduce your organization’s overall data profile.
Maintaining too much data is like building a far larger house than you need. You need to pay for building materials and labor for every square foot, but the costs don’t end there. You’ll have to pay to furnish, insure, maintain, clean, heat, or cool all of those spaces (not to mention paying taxes on the whole property). You could focus on each element of the cost equation, sourcing cheaper lumber, comparing insurance policies, and shopping for lower-cost furnishings. Or you could reduce the size of the house and immediately cut your expenses across the board.
