Ever added up all that eDiscovery data you are storing on your network?  Most firms follow a very “organic” approach to eDiscovery management, so you may not realize how it all adds up.  In case you have not gone through the mental math, here is the rule of thumb:

eDiscovery requires x6 the storage capacity of the original data

Photo: Paul Hammnond

That means in the life of 10 GB case, you will store 60 GB of data.  Stick that in your data management plan.

Many CIOs or IT Directors will ask the litigation support manager:  How could this be necessary?  Why can’t you lit support people better manage your data?  After all, we have given you NAS space, SAN space and any combination of SATA, SCSI and Fibre drives.  So what gives?

Just so there is no confusion, most litigation support professionals are careful, calculated people.  They have a reason for each step in their work flow - which needs to be a defensible process.  So if you have been curious about eDiscovery data storage, here is a list of what is involved:

• Data #1: Original data sent from client, vendor or other third party
• Data #2: Extracted version of the original data
• Data #3: Culled data from the extracted set
• Data #4: Processed data from the culled set (this might include TIFFs)
• Data #5: Document review database files and full text index
• Data #6: Productions, productions, productions

Many people ask whether you can just delete data as you move along the process, thus breaking even along the way.  The problem is you need to A) defend your work all along the way and B) be able to go back and bring more data in from earlier stages that you may have left out through culling, etc.

This eDiscovery data storage “problem” become quite dramatic when you start talking about larger cases.  Imagine a small firm that is facing a 300 GB case.  They might say, “No problem.  Let’s get a 1 TB NAS to store the data and accommodate growth.”  Unfortunately, what they really need is almost 2 TB of disk space and plan for unexpected growth beyond that.  So it really adds up.

And while the eDiscovery storage problem is as nasty one, the biggest issue of course is that attorneys never want to archive the data to less expensive storage. Even when the case is over.  <sigh>

What has your experience been.  Do you see more or less data at your firm/company?

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These days, of course, I am more partial to pushing the storage burden to third party providers.  Feel free to contact me with questions.