Using Contract Attorneys To Conduct Document Review

Discovery is frequently the most expensive part of any litigation. Discovery is expensive because companies have a lot of documents. Companies now have more documents than ever before because of advances in electronic communication and data storage. Documents are created, on e-mail and in e-mail attachments, in cases where no document would have existed before. And documents are stored without concerns about physical storage space. Documents are more likely kept on flash drives, on shared network drives, and in e-mail folders, in an amount of space that is negligible compared with the amount of space an equivalent amount of information stored on paper would occupy. From a business perspective, these changes are positive — they have allowed for the storage of a great deal more information at a much smaller cost. From an in-house attorney’s perspective, this avalanche of electronic information is the reason why this year’s litigation budget cannot be met.