One of the biggest drivers of excessive eDiscovery costs is ESI over-collection. This in turn leads to a larger amount of data entering the processing and initial review funnel. These traditional inefficient efforts are manual with numerous hand offs and a high degree of project management and consulting hours to oversee the disjointed workflow. A recent analysis by Compliance CEO Marc Zamsky, illustrated in the chart below, established that cost for collection, processing and first month hosting under a traditional preservation process can cost upwards of $12,000 per custodian:
Properly targeted preservation initiatives are permitted by the courts and can be enabled by next generation software that is able to quickly and effectively access and search these data sources in place and throughout the enterprise. The value of targeted preservation is recognized in the Committee Notes to the recent FRCP amendments, which urge the parties to reach agreement on the preservation of data and the key words, date ranges and other metadata to identify responsive materials. (Citing the Manual for Complex Litigation (MCL) (4th) §40.25(2)). And In re Genetically Modified Rice Litigation, the court noted that “[p]reservation efforts can become unduly burdensome and unreasonably costly unless those efforts are targeted to those documents reasonably likely to be relevant or lead to the discovery of relevant evidence.”
Recently we hosted a webinar with Compliance highlighting the very compelling integration of our X1 Distributed Discovery platform with Relativity. This X1/Relativity integration enables game-changing efficiencies in the eDiscovery process by accelerating speed to review, and providing an end-to-end process from identification through production. As recently stated by Relativity Chief Product Officer Chris Brown: “Our exciting new partnership with X1 highlights our continued commitment to providing a streamlined user experience from collection to production…RelativityOne users will be able to combine X1’s innovative endpoint technology with the performance of our SaaS platform, eliminating the cumbersome process of manual data hand-offs and allowing them to get to the pertinent data in their case – faster.”
The live demonstration highlighted in real time how the integration improves the enterprise eDiscovery collection and ECA process by enabling a targeted and efficient search and collection process, with immediate pre-collection visibility into custodian data. X1 Distributed Discovery significantly streamlines the eDiscovery workflow with integrated culling and deduplication, thereby eliminating the need for expensive and cumbersome electronically stored information (ESI) processing tools. That way, the ESI can be populated straight into Relativity from an X1 collection without multiple hand offs, extensive project management and inefficient data processing.
Zamsky commented that the “ability to collect directly from custodian laptops and desktops into a RelativityOne workspace without impacting custodians is a game-changer,” which will “reduce collection times from weeks to hours so that attorneys can quickly begin reviewing and analyzing ESI in RelativityOne.” In fact, Zamsky demonstrated just that by presenting a second chart showing how this streamlined approach, based upon a detailed ROI analysis, reduces eDiscovery costs by over 90 percent:
So in terms of the big picture, with this integration providing a complete platform for efficient data search, eDiscovery, and review across the enterprise, organizations will save a lot of time, save a lot of money, and be able to make faster and better decisions. When you accelerate the speed to review and eliminate over-collection and inefficient processing, you are going to have much better early insight into your data and increase efficiencies on many levels.
A recording of the X1/Relativity integration webinar can be accessed here.