Extract from eDiscovery AI’s article “From Assessment to Advantage: Why Your Team Should Move from ECA to Early Case Intelligence™”
Day one of a new matter should not feel like standing at the base of a data avalanche. For years, Early Case Assessment has helped teams take an initial cut, estimate volumes, run keywords, and sketch budgets and risks. Useful, yes. But ECA is constrained by filters and parameters that merely define the boundaries of a dataset, while Early Case Intelligence™ (ECI) reveals the content within.
Modern eDiscovery demands early understanding that aligns with proportionality and informs strategy. That is the shift ECI invites. Instead of tallying documents to guess at scope, ECI interprets them early enough to shape scoping, negotiation, and workflow before review begins. ECI is not a bolt-on feature to ECA; it is the evolution of ECA for the opening phase of discovery that blends analytics, AI, and disciplined process to generate decision-ready insight.
ECI can strengthen the early phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), where strategy and scope are defined. Identification becomes more precise because early intelligence clarifies which data types and sources are material.
