How Do I Get Cost-Effective eDiscovery for My Law Firm?

31 July 2019 by Anith Mathai eDiscovery law-firm

Takeaway: The trick is to find a good Cloud eDiscovery service. Ideally, one that charges you a fixed monthly fee. Where you know exactly what you’re paying for, up front. And, as a reference, a competitive starting price is $27 a month for 3 GB of data.

“How do I get a cost-effective document review?”

With eDiscovery, cost-effective and quick-‘n-easy document review is the holy grail. And here’s the sort of query we often come across:

“Hello! My law firm needs a cost-effective way to get some document-discovery reviewed. Which software should we buy? We’d also need basic OCR’ing. And documents will have to be categorized based on keywords and phrases.”

To answer this question, here’s what we’ll need to cover.

“Should I buy eDiscovery software or use a vendor?”
“Will it have the features I need?”
“Which pricing system is best?”
“Which eDiscovery service should I use?”

Question 1: “Should I buy eDiscovery software or use a vendor offering an eDiscovery service?”

This is the first thing to sort out. And it cuts prices significantly. Earlier, law firms would buy eDiscovery software that they’d run on-premises. This often meant buying new servers to host their data. As well as installing, updating, and protecting the software. Which meant you’d need an IT team. Nowadays, you can outsource all of this by using an eDiscovery service (via a vendor). It’s called Software as a Service, and it’s revolutionizing eDiscovery. Here, instead of downloading and installing eDiscovery software, you simply access it over the internet. So, your software runs in the Cloud (I.e., a vast network of interconnected servers), and your vendor handles all the technical stuff. This means:

You won’t need new equipment. And you won’t need to install anything. Because you’re accessing the software over the internet.
You won’t need an IT team since your eDiscovery vendor maintains the software.
You’ll never lose your data since it’s backed up on multiple Cloud servers. So, even if a few go down, it won’t affect you. Plus, your data is protected with bank-grade security. So it’s safe from theft and natural disasters.
You can access files from anywhere. All you’ll need is a laptop and an internet connection. Perfect for when you’re on-the-go. Or stuck at an airport waiting for a delayed flight.
It’s easy to collaborate. Multiple users can use the software, so it’s easy for teams to work together and share productions.

Learn more about SaaS.

Question 2: “Will the software have the features I need?”

Most Cloud eDiscovery applications will have all the features you’ll need. They’ll OCR your documents, let you tag and categorize them, help you search for keywords, and give you ‘production’ options. So, what really matters is the next step – finding a good price.

Question 3: “Which pricing system is best?”

Here’s where you have choices. But not all of them are equal. These are the most common pricing options you’ll come across:

Pay for individual eDiscovery features. You pay for your data to be processed. Then for it to be hosted. Then for it to be produced. And so on. www.indexed.io uses this pricing model. They charge about $30 per GB per month. And it’s prorated.
Pay for how much data you initially upload. www.logikcull.com uses this pricing model. You’re billed for your ‘ingestion volume.’ And then you pay a flat fee of $250 per month.
Pay for the maximum size your case reaches. www.everlaw.com offers an all-inclusive price, based on the ‘peak size of project data for the month.’
Pay for a fixed amount of storage space. www.goldfynch.com charges a flat, all-inclusive, monthly rate. It’s called fixed-volume, prorated pricing. And you’d pay $76 per month for 10 GB of storage.

Which pricing system will suit you depends on your needs. But most law firms prefer a simple, flat rate (that they can budget for, in advance). And a rate where you know what you’re paying for. So, pricing plan #4 (paying for a fixed chunk of storage space) is becoming increasingly popular.

Question 4: “Which eDiscovery service should I use?”

That depends on how big your law firm is, how many cases you get a year, how skilled your workforce is, etc. But an example of powerful-but-foolproof eDiscovery is GoldFynch. It’s a next-generation eDiscovery application that prioritizes things that matter:

It costs just $27 a month for a 3 GB case: That’s much less – every month – than the nearest comparable software. And hundreds of dollars less than many others. With GoldFynch, you know what you’re paying for exactly – its pricing is simple and readily available on the website.
It’s easy to budget for. GoldFynch has a flat, prorated rate. With legacy software, your bill changes depending on how much data you use.
It takes just minutes to get going. It runs in the Cloud, so you use it through your web browser (Google Chrome recommended). No installation. No sales calls or emails. Plus, you get a free, fully-functional trial case (0.5 GB of data and a processing cap of 1 GB), without adding a credit card.
It can handle even the largest cases. GoldFynch scales from small to large, since it’s in the Cloud. So, choose from a range of case sizes (3 GB to 150 GB, and more) and don’t waste money on space you don’t need.
You can access it from anywhere. And 24/7. All your files are backed up and secure in the Cloud. And you can monitor its servers here.
You won’t have to worry about technical stuff. It’s designed, developed and run by the same team. So, its technical support isn’t outsourced. Which means you get prompt and reliable service.

Want to learn more about GoldFynch?

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