Rand Report on Electronic Discovery Costs
In 2012, the Rand Institute on Civil Justice published, Where the Money Goes: Understanding Litigant Expenditures for Producing Electronic Discovery. The report consisted of case studies of eight different corporations, and review of additional electronic discovery literature. The study is well known for finding that 73% of the cost of producing documents is taken up by Review, with Collection accounting for 8%, and Processing 19%. Outside counsel was found to charge for 70% of the overall costs, vendors 26%, and only 4% of the cost came from internal activities. In 45 of 49 cases outside counsel conducted Review; while in 42 of 44 cases vendors handled processing, and in 31 of 42 cases the vendors performed collection. [The median cost of production in the cases in the study was $1.8 million.]
A study of a review team using a predictive coding application showed variances between 66% - 81% in the Recall rate, and 68& - 81% in Precision rates.