Can There Be Cost Effective E-Discovery?

A recent post by David West, a veep of CommVault argues that there are "Smart Shortcuts to More Cost-Effective eDiscovery." Basically, the suggestion of this vendor is that e-discovery be moved in-house, avoiding the sometimes extremely high costs of outsourcing to third party discovery vendors. Of course, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the entry fee for being able to move e-discovery inside.

Clearly, a corporation which is willing to invest the time and money to build systems which permit it to anticipate demands for electronic discovery can find cost effective shortcuts to e-discovery. More importantly, they might even find it affordable to defend meritless cases in which massive e-discovery demands are levied upon them and thereby avoid the vacuous evaluative conclusion "it is cheaper to settle than to discover." It is a real question in the current economic climate whether many corporations will be able to afford the high startup costs of buying the tools and building the systems necessary for effective, defensible in-house e-discovery. However, it is an equally real question whether corporations can afford NOT to make the investment lest the house come tumbling down when the "bet the company" e-discovery case comes along.