Nuggets of Gold from a TAR Fight

Provider pricing and custodial metrics are often impossible to find because so much of the eDiscovery market insists on wrapping sales in NDAs.  That can be frustrating to a consultant who specializes in solution proposals, ROI analysis and RFP engagements. So you can imagine how happy I am to share the public details gleaned from digging through the actual order and Casetext’s fabulous synopsis. I want to encourage peers to subscribe to the Gibbons Law Alert that brought this to my attention. They are on an eDiscovery roll and Charlotte Howells write ups are excellent. I always find that reading the source material is key to finding all the juicy details. I am not going to even try to summarize the case when others have done it so well. Instead, I have crawled through the above links and extracted key metrics for your eDiscovery geekiness. All extracted numbers and calculations are my best interpretation rather than any direct access to actual invoices.

• Plaintiff initial request – 100+ terms, 69 custodians
• Defense – tests terms on 4 custodians – 320k hits, <15% responsive on sampling
• Negotiated first protocol – 10 custodians – 1.8M files collected (1.2M after dedup) – eDJ:33% dups is low in my experience. I would want to understand retention/sources
  • Plaintiff 803 terms – 304k hits (468k with families), 7.8% responsive sampling
  • 180k/custodian – 2,342 files/GB – eDJ:very large docs
• Magistrate limits Plaintiff to 25 terms/custodian – 322k hits, avg. 5.1% responsive
• Defense Legality costs $108k & $31k attorney sampling review
• Estimated Catalyst TAR budget $325-500k – 468k files – 200 GB – 65% recall target
  • Final 24k doc production – 3.3% responsive – 85% recall rate – est. $600k cost
• Parallel Defense traditional interview and targeted discovery yields 4,700 more relevant docs. Triggers cost shifting motion for Plaintiff requested TAR.
• Plaintiff vendor H5 argues TAR 1.0 more effective that TAR 2.0 – eDJ:interesting…
• Final award $754k in TAR related expenses (including motion fees)
• $445k Legality cost breakdown – Venio processing, Calalyst Predict TAR & contract reviewers – 60% of overall award
  • Effective cost – $82/doc relevant doc (9,128 docs + families)
  • TAR review took 3.5 months
  • Coding for responsiveness, tiered confidentiality, and privilege
  • Contract reviewers $55/85 per hour – 2,970 review hours – 53% total
    • 230 hours of review management & metrics $85/135/200 per hour
    • Counsel 2^nd review – 650 hours – 4 billed at partner rates ($275-375), court capped at $275/hour eDJ: 14 docs/hour 2^nd pass
  • 26 docs/hour due to large, complex exec docs – eDJ: 2,342 files/GB well below industry average metrics
  • 59 hours of training at $55/hour
  • PM $250/hour – 312 hours – 14% Legality total
  • $182/GB processing/hosting – $214/GB TAR & near-line hosting – 39% Legality total eDJ:based on 200 GB per order, but betting there was more data hosted.
    • Legality hosting $30/GB/month ($6k/month – 200 GB)
  • TAR privilege log – 2,500 entries – 160 counsel hours – 16/hour
    • Tech time – 16 hours @ $200/hour

I hope that you enjoyed all the raw pricing, metrics and rough calculations as much as I did. Our industry needs a lot more of these kinds of public benchmarks to support our own comparative spend assessments. This is the reason that I and others started the first EDRM Metrics project. And why I was happy to burn far too many hours working with the LEDES Oversight Committee to draft the eDiscovery billing codes.  I need that detailed invoice data to understand my client’s eDiscovery spend and how to optimize the value of every dollar. If you stumble across any other eDiscovery cat fights with this kind of detail, send me the link!

Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a free 15 minute ‘Good Karma’ call. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients.

Greg’s blog perspectives are personal opinions and should not be interpreted as a professional judgment or advice. Greg is no longer a journalist and all perspectives are based on best public information. Blog content is neither approved nor reviewed by any providers prior to being posted. Do you want to share your own perspective? Greg is looking for practical, professional informative perspectives free of marketing fluff, hidden agendas or personal/product bias. Outside blogs will clearly indicate the author, company and any relevant affiliations.