Benefits of small cases in a review platform

Posted On: Friday, July 28, 2023

When we ask attorneys if they have need for an electronic discovery platform, we sometimes get the response “I don’t have large enough cases for that.” Underlying that statement is the belief that only large cases work with hosting platforms. We don’t believe that this is true. For almost every case, don’t you want:

• Control of your documents
• An ability to easily access and share documents
• A way to create and share work product and preserve it for the life of the case
• Technology that saves your client time and money and improves your results

And what about collections? Even if you have one custodian, aren’t you better safe than sorry making sure collection work is done in a forensically sound manner? As with a larger case, you ascertain the sources of relevant data and you collect them. Or have assistance with the collection so it is done properly.

Why the objections to doing it the “right way”? Primarily there is the perception that these tools are expensive. Many don’t realize that most of the costs associated with collection, hosting, review, and production are based on the size of the data, so a smaller set of data will cost less. Ask for a price estimate and you may be surprised.

A typical case with a couple of thousand email messages might cost $25-$50 per month for hosting. Given the efficiencies of online document review and attorney billing rates, clients should be requesting that their attorneys adopt this approach even for small cases.

Bottom line is that for all but the smallest cases attorneys should consider having collections done properly and hosting their case data in a review platform. Attorneys should practice law and leave the document work to people who have expertise in document work. Trite, but true.