While there is no set formula for how much you can save by bringing certain eDiscovery activities in-house, we can look at some generalities.  Note that the amount saved will depend upon the amount of information your organization creates, the level and effectiveness of any information management initiatives you already have in place, and your litigation profile (whether you get sued a lot).  Suffice it to say that the savings, though, can be significant.  Take this example – let’s assume a small case with only 20 custodians, each of whom contribute 10 GBs of data.  If an organization turns that data over for processing at the average cost of $1,000 per GB, the processing alone will cost $200,000.  And remember, that’s just the cost of processing.  Having a law firm review that data just for responsiveness and privilege will cost more:

• there are typically 7,000 documents per GB
• average review rate is 60 documents per hour
• average blended hourly review rate is $150 per hour

Therefore, the cost of privilege review for 200 GBs of data will be about $3.5 million.  Processing and review will total close to $4 million.  That’s a large cost.  If you set up a proactive infrastructure to preserve, collect, and analyze information, you can benefit in several ways. First, you can likely reduce the size of your responsive data set by at least 50% by search and filter capabilities – that alone will reduce downstream processing and review costs by ½.  I n addition, you can avoid costs altogether with informed decision-making. If eDiscovery for a case is going to cost $2 million, but the case can be settled for $25,000, you can quickly make the decision to settle the case.  Yes – big savings potential.