Dark Data in eDiscovery: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Tackle It

13 November 2025 by Uday eDiscovery dark-data

Takeaway: In today’s legal world, information is everything. From litigation to regulatory compliance and internal investigations, data drives decisions. But there’s a massive category of information most legal teams ignore: dark data. Let’s understand what dark data is, why it matters in eDiscovery, and how legal teams can manage it effectively to reduce risk, control costs, and uncover hidden insights.

What is dark data?

Dark data refers to the information your business gathers during normal operations but never uses. Think:

Old emails and chats
Draft documents
System logs and backups
Archived audio files
Outdated customer records

If your organization’s data were an iceberg, the visible tip is the structured, actively used data. Everything lurking below the surface? That’s dark data.

In the context of eDiscovery, that unseen mass could hold critical evidence or become a costly, compliance-threatening mess.

Why dark data matters in eDiscovery

Dark data is not just an IT problem. For legal teams, it’s a high-stakes issue with real consequences. Here’s why:

1. Hidden evidence

Dark data may contain crucial case evidence: a draft that shows intent, an old email that contradicts a claim, or metadata revealing who edited a document and when. Overlooking it can mean missing the whole story.

2. Compliance risks

With regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA, failing to manage data properly is a legal risk. If dark data contains sensitive information (like PII) and you can’t account for it, you expose yourself to audits, fines, or worse.

3. Skyrocketing eDiscovery costs

Unmanaged data takes up space and time. When litigation hits, reviewing terabytes of irrelevant or uncategorized information drives up eDiscovery costs fast.

4. Cybersecurity threats

Dark data is unmonitored data. That makes it vulnerable. If a breach hits this forgotten information, your organization could face reputational damage and legal fallout.

5. Slower, harder discovery

When you don’t know where your data is or what it contains, discovery becomes a needle-in-a-haystack exercise. That delays cases and leads to inefficiencies.

How to manage dark data in eDiscovery

Taming dark data requires a proactive, structured approach. Here are six smart steps to gain control:

1. Run a data inventory

Start by identifying what data you have and where it’s stored. Map out:

File shares
Email servers
Cloud platforms
Backup systems
Collaboration tools (e.g., Slack, Teams)

Tip: Partner with your IT team and use automated data mapping tools. They can index and categorize repositories, helping you spotlight dark data.

2. Classify your data

Once you’ve found your dark data, sort it. Classification makes filtering and reviewing data easier in legal matters.

Focus on:

Tagging sensitive data (PII, financials, IP)
Categorizing by relevance to ongoing or potential legal matters
Applying metadata for easy searching and filtering

3. Set data retention policies

Don’t keep what you don’t need. Define clear retention schedules:

Delete outdated emails, documents, and files that no longer serve a legal or regulatory purpose.
Align retention timelines with compliance standards and risk management policies.

This minimizes exposure and cuts unnecessary storage costs.

4. Leverage eDiscovery tools

Modern eDiscovery platforms (like ours) include powerful features designed for dark data discovery:

Keyword and advanced search: Quickly find relevant content.
Data classification: Tag and sort files based on content.
Data analytics: Identify trends, patterns, and potential evidence.

Smart tools reduce manual effort, speed up reviews, and help uncover hidden insights.

5. Make dark data part of your eDiscovery workflow

Integrate dark data into your existing eDiscovery protocol:

Include it in legal hold notices.
Make it part of your collection and review phases.
Ensure your processes account for unstructured and archived data sources.

6. Collaborate across departments

Effective dark data management is cross-functional. Legal, IT, compliance, and data governance teams need to align on:

Data retention policies
Privacy regulations
eDiscovery readiness

Regular communication ensures that no department becomes a weak link.

Shine a light on dark data

In eDiscovery, what you don’t see can hurt you. Dark data may be hidden, but its impact is very real. By surfacing and managing this data, legal teams can uncover valuable insights, reduce review time, stay compliant, and slash eDiscovery costs. It’s not just risk management, it’s smart legal strategy.

Ready to bring your dark data into the light? Explore how GoldFynch can help.

GoldFynch is a Cloud eDiscovery service that is easy to use, has automatic file processing, advanced search tools, file tagging, easy deduplication, and charges only for storage used. It is perfect for small to mid-sized law firms.

It costs just $27 a month for a 3 GB case: That is significantly less than most comparable software. 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 charges only for storage (processing is free). So, choose from a range of plans (3 GB to 150+ GB) and know upfront how much you’ll be paying. It takes just a few clicks to move from one plan to another, and billing is prorated – so you’ll pay only for the time you spend on any given plan. With legacy software, pricing is much less predictable.
It’s simple to use. Many eDiscovery applications take hours to master. GoldFynch takes minutes. It handles a lot of complex processing in the background, but what you see is minimal and intuitive. Just drag-and-drop your files into GoldFynch and you’re good to go. Plus, it’s designed, developed, and run by the same team. So you get prompt and reliable tech support.
It keeps you flexible. To build a defensible case, you need to be able to add and delete files freely. Many applications charge to process each file you upload, so you’ll be reluctant to let your case organically shrink and grow. And this stifles you. With GoldFynch, you get unlimited processing for free. So, on a 3 GB plan, you could add and delete 5 GB of data at no extra cost – as long as there’s only 3GB in your case at any point. And if you do cross 3GB, your plan upgrades automatically and you’ll be charged for only the time spent on each plan. That’s the beauty of prorated pricing.
Access it from anywhere. And 24/7. All your files are backed up and secure in the Cloud.

Want to learn more about GoldFynch?

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