When it comes to electronic discovery, maintaining cost and control while reducing risk exposure are paramount concerns for internal corporate counsel. In-house e-discovery provides considerable advantages to achieve these goals, but often times it can be unclear if your organization is ready to transition to an in-house e-discovery process.
Here are some considerations to help you navigate the decision to bring your e-discovery in-house.
Why Bring E-discovery In-House?Experience Cost SavingsEnterprises who have purchased e-discovery software report that the software pays for itself in a matter of months or is justified by the projected cost savings of one, "big case." Legal budget savings is achieved through: - – Reduced amount of data collected with culling at the collection point and during processing, which greatly lowers the downstream review costs
- – Eliminated outsourced attorneys fees for processing and early case assessment costs
- – Greater process efficiency due to scalability and support for in-house early case assessment, collection, and preservation
Reduce Risk ExposureWith in-house e-discovery, organizations can reduce risk by taking control of the e-discovery process; including: - – Enables internal capability to issue custodian notifications, quickly preserve ESI, and automatically track the legal hold process
- – Ensures legal obligations are met and avoid sanctions due to incomplete ESI preservation
Increase DefensibilityEnsuring defensibility with e-discovery is essential: - – According to Judge Scheindlin opinion, “Cases in 2009 demonstrated that companies without a clear, consistent, repeatable process for the identification, preservation, and collection of electronic documents will be the subject of judicial sanctions”*
- – With EnCase eDiscovery, organizations increase defensibility with a repeatable process that provides chain of custody, history, and a full audit trail
When Should You Bring E-discovery In-House?In-house e-discovery is a viable option for organizations of all sizes. Rather than considering organization size, a better variable to determine if in-house e-discovery is right for your organization is to review the average number of cases and size of the cases your organization handles each year.
According to Deb Logan, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Research, “Most companies with any kind of level of litigation at all – maybe even ten cases a year or one or two big cases a year with multiple custodians – should really give serious thought to bringing the process in house.”**
With this benchmark, organizations find that bringing e-discovery in-house proves to provide a fast return on investment as well as a streamlined and more efficient business process. In most cases, internal legal teams find that their time is more effectively spent with an in-house e-discovery solution as compared to their time spent supporting a completely outsourced e-discovery process.
Once you have made the decision that in-house e-discovery is right for your organization, the ideal time to adopt an in-house e-discovery solution is now – before litigation is anticipated. With this approach, the in-house e-discovery process can be effectively applied from the beginning of a new case. *Source: Judge Scheindlin, “Pension Committee v. Banc of America Securities, LLC, No.05 Civ. 9016 (SAS), 2010 WL 184312 (S.D.N.Y. Jan 15, 2010)
**Source: Deb Logan, VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Research, “Bring e-discovery in-house” Gartner and Guidance Software Webinar
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