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Law firms and corporations are always looking to save time and money. Remote collection has many benefits, including the ability to help reduce the amount of time and money spent on eDiscovery. Travel is the most obvious expense that comes with on-site collections, especially if the documents and custodians are located in an isolated area. With remote collection, data can be gathered from any place in the world through a secure, defensible process. Remote collection can also allow data to be collected without disturbing the user or disrupting normal business activities, saving money on company operations.

There are several methods for remote collection, and each offers its own unique benefits. As eDiscovery continues to grow, new remote data collection procedures are coming out all the time. Some of the best remote collection methods today are remote collection portables, web collection and placing a remote collection device behind a company firewall.

Remote collection portables: Remote collection portables are small pieces of hardware, similar to thumb drives, that are sent to custodians to gather data. The device, pre-programmed by professional technicians, is plugged into the target computer and automatically finds the data that has been deemed relevant. That data is then saved to an accompanying hard drive. Remote collection portables are:

• Most beneficial when collecting from multiple custodians at multiple locations.
• Able to filter at the point of collection, including culling based on file format, date, time or hash values.

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Web collection: Web collection allows multiple types of data to be safely and defensibly gathered from a limitless amount of custodians via the Web. Data is collected using a single Web-based portal.  Companies of virtually any size can use this data collection procedure. Web collection offers:

• No software installations or hardware costs required.
• Live updates on collection status and file types.

Remote collection device behind company firewall: Placing a remote collection device behind a company firewall allows a forensic expert to log in remotely and perform defensible data collections from any accessible device on the network, including computers, servers, smartphones, tablets and other devices.

These enterprise systems can vary a great deal in size and functionality, and some provide more scalability than others. Current and future requirements should be considered when determining the best platform for your corporation.

DSi’s proprietary Remote Governance and Collections (RGC) platform remotely identifies, collects, verifies, filters and transfers data in a timely, secure and cost-effective manner with minimal demand on the client’s IT resources. RGC is also:

• Able to perform various filters, including date range and file type, during collection, which expedites collections and reduces subsequent processing or storage expenses.
• Eminently scalable and flexible.
• Easily upgradable with new modules or servers to accommodate future requirements.
• Able to identify issues in your information management policies, retention and network security.

We have done proofs of concept for RGC that verify the effectiveness and security of the method. In one case, we saved the company at least $60,000 by using our RGC. (Read this case study to learn more.)  Savings of this type can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

Click the button to the side to get your own free proof of concept for DSi’s proprietary RGC platform.

The right solution will be different for each firm or corporation. Before you make a choice, consider the cost, complexity and quality.

Cost

Return on investment (ROI) is an important factor for all businesses, including law firms and legal departments. Is it a better value to invest in the resources to handle eDiscovery internally or to hire an outside firm? 

Determine the money it will take to purchase the necessary software and hardware and to train employees, then compare that amount to the cost of using a professional eDiscovery firm. The three-year cost for a medium-sized installation—not including internal implementation time—is estimated to be $1,070,000, according to Inside Counsel. You also must consider the time it will take to develop an efficient internal process.

Law firms and corporations face the risk of obsolescence when bringing eDiscovery in house. As technology changes, your $1 million investment could be rendered outdated by advances in the market.

Whether or not bringing eDiscovery services in-house will be more cost effective usually depends on the number of cases and size of cases your organization faces each year.

Complexity

The more complex the litigation is, the more likely it is that an outside litigation support services firm will be brought in to handle eDiscovery. Some law firms and corporations will handle eDiscovery internally for cases with a smaller amount of data, but outsource the work if the case is a certain size. You can also handle certain stages of the process internally and outsource the more difficult work. For example, litigation holds and early-phase eDiscovery may be done in-house while an outside eDiscovery firm handles the later stages.

Hybrids are another possibility. Using cloud-based eDiscovery services, you can rely on a vendor for infrastructure and support while your own eDiscovery staff manages the service.

Quality

At the end of the day, you need to be sure that your eDiscovery needs are being taken care of in the best way possible, and most importantly, in a defensible way. The quality of the work depends on the quality of the software, which becomes more expensive as you add more features. Because it’s their primary focus, an eDiscovery firm is able to invest in the best software and the most recent technology. Advanced technology has the ability to reduce the number of documents attorneys need to review, which can result in huge savings.

You also need to be able to trust your internal eDiscovery team. Substandard work can lead to a number of negative consequences, so it is important to do eDiscovery correctly if you bring it in-house. If you don’t have an employee who could easily manage eDiscovery and you can’t hire someone, it may be better to outsource the work to professionals.

Ultimately the right decision for each law firm and legal department depends on resources, budget and priorities. Before making a decision, firms and corporations should analyze past, present and projected uses, software and hardware capacity and financial and personnel requirements. You should also take the time to talk with a reliable vendor that provides litigation support services. A decade ago, eDiscovery wasn’t used consistently so outsourcing was the obvious choice. Now that eDiscovery is a common process, it’s important to decide how you should handle it.

Click the button on the right to download our free white paper to help decide if you should keep eDiscovery in-house or outsource it.

Is the solution an alternative fee structure? Many think so. But this approach also has a downside. It might be more predictable, but can often be more expensive. If you go with a per-custodian or per-gigabyte price, the vendor has to make some assumptions in the estimate. This built-in risk assumption is necessary to protect the vendor, and can result in predictable but higher-than-necessary bills.

Compare it to building a house. Let’s say you hire a contractor to build a 3,000 square foot home, with only cursory instructions on your preferences and details. Can he give you an estimate? Yes, but he is going to have to inflate the estimate and surround it with qualifiers to protect himself from losing money on the project. If his last 10 clients all wound up requesting expensive materials and details, then he must assume you might do the same. So guess what? He’s going to give you a really high estimate for building it. And if you end up using lower end finishes, pine and laminates, then his cost to build will be much lower than he anticipated. If he committed to a flat-fee pricing structure at the beginning, he is not going to give you back the difference. That additional profit on your project is part of his risk tradeoff for those projects that were more expensive to build.

It’s conceptually similar with eDiscovery. A flat-fee estimate will have to assume what the extraction rate of your data might be, how duplicative the data is, what date or file filters might do, and what might be responsive to search terms or TAR before going to review. To mix our metaphors, there are no ‘rollover minutes’ in eDiscovery.

If anyone tells you they have a magic pricing model that is best for every matter…run. Fast. Let me give you an example of how some vendors are playing the shell game I mentioned in Part 1 of this blog. Let’s take a look at how this can become confusing with something as simple as user fees.

Vendor A has a platform that charges $35 per gigabyte for hosting. Vendor B’s platform is $25 per gigabyte for hosting. It seems like an obvious choice, right? Not so fast. Take a closer look at Vendor B. They have a line item in their pricing for $75 per month per user. That seems reasonable… unless this is a fast moving review with several users, in which case there is a problem.

Example: 30 GB hosted with 8 users
Vendor A: $1,050 hosting monthly
Vendor B: $750 hosting + $600 in user fees = $1,350 Monthly
That’s an increase of over 28%… shell game.

Or here is another example. Provider C offers a price of $750 per gig-to-tiff. Provider D offers more aggressive pricing of $500 per gig-to-tiff. Another easy choice, right? But Provider D has line item pricing that includes $.01 per endorsement per page. That penny could easily be overlooked like walking past a copper Lincoln in the supermarket parking lot. But wait a minute… if there is also a confidential stamp, that could be $.02 per page. If you assume 50,000 pages in one gigabyte, that’s another $1,000 per gigabyte for endorsements. So that cheap $500 goes up to $1,500 in a blink of an eye. Are you following the shell?

Let’s pick apart my scenario above… did you see my assumption? Even something as simple as the assumption for how many pages are in a gigabyte can be sleight of hand. I commonly see estimates as low as 20,000 pages and as high as 100,000 pages. An incorrect estimate could end with paying four or five times what you thought you’d pay. Those are practically Vegas odds.

Times are changing. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t despair… or change careers.

As the industry matures, responsible providers are finding ways to lead with predictable, transparent pricing that only charges you for exactly what you use. Technology is emerging that allows us to provide incredible insight into your data before you take the project plunge. For example, our proprietary DSi Intake platform allows us to gain vast amounts of information about your data before any processing takes place, such as the number of files, the file types, how many are duplicative, how many will likely be removed by date range filters and more. This allows us to provide predictable budgeting at the outset, removing the risks of paying $1 million for a house filled with laminate counters and shag carpet.

The newest Early Data Assessment tools can give us a clear look at what the real metrics of your data are, not just averages or assumptions, so we can provide accurate budgeting on the front end. Removing the mystery surrounding your data enables us to intelligently provide a close estimate for the total cost of the project without building assumptions or having an inflated per-custodian or per-gigabyte price.

This is the direction the industry is going. Customer-centric, technologically advanced providers are putting this kind of pricing into place already. We’re creating predictability without the high-risk assumptions. We’re saving you money. We make eDiscovery about people. No shell games.

One of the greatest challenges facing corporations and firms that try to evaluate eDiscovery services is the lack of consistent pricing language. Without this, it is difficult, if not impossible, to compare proposals from multiple eDiscovery service providers.

If I don’t really understand what you’re selling me, or even how much of a certain service I’ll need, how can I have predictability? What one provider charges per GB for, another quotes per page. This spawns a speculative calculation on the number of docs per GB… or was that pages? Does Provider A’s ‘Advancedlook ECA’ service provide the same filtering options as Vendor B’s ‘Tranparent Analytics’ service? Frustrating!

1.  An Industry in Middle School – How many people can say what they deal with every day wasn’t even a word in the mid 1990’s? I love trying to explain what we do when speaking to friends and family at a Christmas party. It’s a great way to clear a room.A new industry lacking any true oversight or governing authority to scrawl standards on stone tablets and pass them down from the mountaintop will naturally lack consistency in its early stages. We’ll give this one a bit of a pass, as all adolescents eventually grow up. At least we parents hope so!
2. What’s Your USP? – For those of you unfamiliar with marketing lingo (be thankful), this is not the company that delivers your packages: it’s your Unique Selling Proposition. The foundation of branding, the USP is the one thing that sets your company apart in the marketplace. It is the Holy Grail of every marketing guru: to build branding with such appeal and uniqueness that the consumer feels inexplicably compelled to buy, and maybe even put the company’s logo on the bumper of their car (see: NASDAQ: AAPL). It is the fundamental effort of every eDiscovery provider, just like any business in any industry, to attempt to stand out from the crowd. As a result, they are likely to call something as simple as file-type filtering by a much grander appellation like, “Advanced Operating System Extension Categorization Sieve”. Unfortunately, this is not likely to change any time soon. Let’s look for help on point 3.
3. The Shell Game – The coconut shells being vigorously whisked about on the table are the eDiscovery services. The ball underneath one of the shells is where you’re really going to get hammered on billing. Many of you have seen it: clients purposefully misled by the salesperson from eDiscovery vendor ‘Y’ to make wrong assumptions based on confusing language. The result is often financially tragic. Is this a foolish long-term strategy? Surely. Does that stop the unscrupulous that can see no further than the next invoice? Nope.

Even worse than the financial implications of this shell game, is that it often results in poor choices about the process and technology to be used, compounding a financial error with issues of efficiency or even defensibility. As DSi VP of Operations Mark Walker said in his Digital Advantage blog earlier this year:

“The biggest mistake made today is to get so caught up in technology cost, because that cost is seen first. This in many cases drives a decision to choose the wrong technology, process or people.”

This mistake is often driven by purposefully confusing pricing models. Fortunately, this problem also subsides (though never vanishes completely) in an industry as it matures and as clients become more empowered with knowledge.

The best news in all of this is that this clarity can be accelerated. We can get to more transparent and predictable eDiscovery pricing in 2013, and it won’t require regulatory intervention. It also probably won’t be through all-in or fixed fee pricing that is currently a popular topic. Such structures may be part of the answer, but they also create their own set of challenges and unintended consequences.

Here’s the cliffhanger: tune in to my next blog to hear our thoughts on how we can get this kid to college and see through the coconut shells.