Electronic Discovery (Calculating Total Cost Expenditures)

Companies seeking to deploy electronic discovery (eDiscovery) solutions could benefit substantially by gaining visibility into the cost associated with the life of an email message–from an individual’s machine to the courthouse. This visibility into the cost can provide companies with concrete dollar values to quantify the specific value proposition respective to deploying eDiscovery technologies that address e-mail discovery, of course an organization can expand this calculation beyond email.

Recently, I presented at a CIO Round Table, hosted by Comport Consulting (http://www.comport.com). It was evident that enterprises have minimal visibility into the discovery legal-technology cost structure. No one in the attendee group was able to provide actual dollar costs of email from birth to trial. I wager that this is not unique.

Many vendors claim that their solution delivers substantial savings but, I think that the complexity of the people, process and technologies each company deploys makes these saving projections circumspect. Some vendors offer rudimentary cost assessments at no charge, but generally the models they deploy are simplistic. Arguably, these free assessments dilute the value of the complex mathematical models that calculate discovery cost metrics.

Organizations that acquire visibility into the cradle to court cost breakdown arm themselves with invaluable data with which they can measure the effectiveness and cost-benefit of technologies, which can then be used to assist IT, legal and business stakeholders to ascertain the business value of investment in technologies that support their internal eDiscovery.