Ediscovery Portfolio Tracking: Don’t Fall Asleep at the Wheel!

As we’ve stated before, many organizations and law firms spend a significant amount of time and money creating and recreating the ediscovery process as each case arises. Thankfully, the multi-matter management approach (also commonly referred to as cross-matter management or portfolio management) is building significant steam in ediscovery and presenting numerous opportunities to cut costs.

While it’s beyond the scope of this post to focus on an in-depth discussion of what multi-matter management entails, those who are unfamiliar should refer back to the wealth of valuable content providing an overview and in-depth discussion of its benefits, and technology that can help manage your ediscovery portfolio.  Broadly speaking, multi-matter management refers to implementing systems, processes and technology that allows litigation teams to address the bigger ediscovery picture by tracking projects and repurposing past work and/or data in similar matters.

We’d be lying if we said we were the first bloggers to compare some facet of ediscovery to an automobile , but your entire ediscovery process should nonetheless function like a well-maintained machine—regardless of the miles you’ve put on it. However, with so many pieces in place, tracking performance is often easier said than done, so what metrics should be on your ediscovery “dashboard” to ensure optimal performance?

Here is a top-down walkthrough of the critical items that should be tracked in your ediscovery “dashboard.” Whether you’re using a multi-matter management tool or diligently tracking them manually, you should regularly keep a pulse on these important metrics:

1. 1. Total spend: similar to your odometer, this metric gives a broad sense of the tread on your ediscovery portfolio’s tires. This metric serves as the “starting point” from which you dive deeper into your ediscovery.
   2. Portfolio spend: while your total spend offers a broad snapshot of your ediscovery expenditures, a breakdown of expenses at the portfolio level provides valuable insight to your spend at various stages of litigation. There’s also value in breaking down the spend in each phase by case, which further allows you to compare and contrast how much each project is billing for various phases of the EDRM.
   3. Project metrics: As you start diving into project-specific financials, there is additional value in tracking several metrics within each project, such as:a. Source GBs b. GBs in review c. Filtering rate d. Deduplication rate e. Keyword hit rate f. Spend per custodianWhile this isn’t an exhaustive list of the metrics you should be tracking at the project level, tracking these metrics across the portfolio will allow greater opportunities to compare and contrast each project.
   4. Custodian metrics: Finally, tracking many of those project-level metrics, such as keyword efficacy and filtering rates, at the custodian level can help pinpoint  irregularities and identify opportunities to improve the efficiency of your ediscovery project.

To help you visualize your ediscovery portfolio in a dashboard, check out our latest infographic, and stay tuned to ediscovery.com Pulse to keep pace with metrics across a larger sample size.