To Self-Collect or not Self-Collect, that is the Question – Part 1 of 2
Posted On: Thursday, November 20, 2025
“Is it okay for my client to collect their own data?” You’ve probably heard this question before, and the answer is almost always “It depends.” There are really two questions here: (1) Is my client capable of collecting their data? And (2) should my client collect their data? Today we’ll focus on the first question and take up the second one in another post.
If your client is an individual or doesn’t have an IT staff, there’s a lot more that can go wrong. The risk of spoliation increases. Without the right knowledge and tools, you can see modified timestamps, overwritten logs, overwritten data and missed linked content. There is also a lack of forensic defensibility if there is no clearly documented process that was followed.
If you determine that your client actually has the ability to collect their own data, the big question is often what tools does your client use? Some allow the end client to apply basic date filters. Some allow the application of search terms to further reduce the volume of data. But there is more behind that. Often the tools an end client has don’t have robust search features. A number of tools have no wildcard search abilities so they search literally, i.e. pray but not praying or prayed. Many tools don’t allow for proximity searching so instead of searching first name within some number of words of last, you must either search just the first or last name or search for an exact string which may not account for middle initials, names listed last name first, or name variations such as Steve or Steven. If a term or variation of a word is overlooked, either you don’t have a complete collection or the client has to go back to the drawing board and do a second or a third collection when you discover the oversight.
Recently we had a client that explained opposing counsel’s client collected a large volume of email from six custodians. They were able to report on the total number of search hits but they weren’t able to provide information on how many times each search term occurred or how often they occurred in the email for each custodian. This information is important when trying to come to an agreement with opposing counsel on how to refine the search terms if the numbers are very large or very small.
Experienced eDiscovery vendors will typically collect by casting a wide net, while still applying date filters. But instead of searching during the collection, they will use much more robust culling tools on the collected data. This allows them to do Boolean searches where needed and to provide comprehensive “hits reports.” They can refine the terms and re-run the reports so that both sides know what they are dealing with.
Having a professional eDiscovery company collect and search is a small cost compared to reviewing a lot of data that should have been culled earlier. We all know document review is the most expensive part of litigation so parties should do all they can to reduce the volume of documents to review.
