by Cara Lemire, Chief Revenue Officer
In-house legal teams are under constant pressure to do more with less. Budgets are scrutinized, matters move faster than ever, and data volumes continue to grow. At the same time, corporations are often managing litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, and internal reviews supported by multiple law firms and service providers.
While this decentralized approach may seem practical on the surface, it often creates inefficiencies, unnecessary costs, and increased risk. Increasingly, corporations are finding value in consolidating their litigation and investigations data under a single trusted service provider or a trusted service provider panel.
Data Reuse Creates Significant Cost Savings
One of the most compelling reasons to centralize data under a trusted provider is the ability to reuse it across matters.
Consider a common scenario: a key executive is involved in an employment matter, a regulatory inquiry, and a commercial dispute over the course of several years. Traditionally, that custodian’s data may be collected, processed, hosted, and reviewed multiple times by different law firms, and the various eDiscovery vendors of those law firms.
The result? The same data is effectively being paid for multiple times, creating inefficiencies and driving up litigation spend. This is problematic because In house legal teams are under constant pressure to reduce litigation spend. By taking a hands off approach to vendor selection, in house legal teams are inadvertently paying 2-3x in costs when not leveraging data re-use workflows.
When data is maintained within a centralized repository, corporations can leverage lower-cost Early Case Assessment (ECA) environments to preserve and manage collected data. As new matters arise, existing custodian data can be reused rather than recollected and reprocessed from scratch.
This approach not only reduces costs but also creates workflow efficiencies. Instead of waiting for collections and processing to be completed, legal teams can begin analyzing data almost immediately.
Prior Work Product Shouldn’t Be Lost
One of the most frustrating realities of traditional matter management is that valuable work product often remains trapped inside a single matter workspace.
Over the course of a review, legal teams invest significant time making coding decisions, identifying key documents, building issue tags, and refining review strategies. When that matter concludes, much of that institutional knowledge becomes difficult to leverage elsewhere.
Taking control of the eDiscovery vetting process and developing long term relationships with a single provider or small panel of providers, ensures that institutional knowledge can be repurposed and leveraged across projects.
Coding decisions can be made portable across related matters, allowing legal teams to benefit from previous work. Responsive, non-responsive, privileged, and issue-specific coding can often serve as a starting point for future reviews involving overlapping custodians, data sources, or subject matter.
Rather than reinventing the wheel with each new matter, teams can build upon the work already completed.
Portable Predictive Coding Models
The same concept applies to technology-assisted review workflows.
Review teams spend considerable effort training predictive models to identify relevant documents. Those models become increasingly valuable as they learn from attorney decisions and matter-specific nuances.
When data and workflows are fragmented across multiple providers, those investments are often isolated to a single matter.
By consolidating data under a single provider, organizations have greater opportunities to leverage prior predictive coding work and accelerate future reviews. Instead of starting from zero, legal teams can capitalize on knowledge already gained through previous matters.
The result is more effective managed review workflows, improved consistency and reduced review costs.
One Dataset, Multiple Workspaces, Billed Once
Certain eDiscovery platforms also make it possible to support different stakeholder groups without duplicating data.
For example, corporations may need separate review environments for outside counsel, joint defense partners, co-counsel or expert witnesses. Historically, this often meant creating separate databases and incurring additional hosting and user costs for each additional workspace housing the same dataset.
Today, platforms like Everlaw allow organizations to create partial projects or separate review workspaces that leverage the same underlying dataset, but with completely separate coding panels.
An expert witness can have access to a dedicated workspace with their own coding panel and review workflow. Joint defense teams can collaborate within separate environments tailored to their needs, and then all have access to the joint productions workspace. Outside counsel can manage their own review strategy while maintaining appropriate security controls.
Most importantly, the data set present in several partial projects is only billed once, dramatically saving on eDiscovery costs.
This creates operational flexibility while avoiding the unnecessary expense of maintaining duplicate datasets across multiple platforms.
Simplify Vendor Management and Budgeting
Many corporations find themselves managing an unwieldly list of vendor relationships driven by outside counsel preferences.
One law firm prefers Vendor A. Another uses Vendor B. A third relies on an entirely different platform, and entirely different vendor. This multiplies across matters. And in some instances, a law firm may say they’re handling eDiscovery with their own team, when they’re using a third party provider.
The result is multiple contracts, varying pricing models, inconsistent workflows, and limited visibility into overall spend.
Centralizing data with a single service provider or small panel of trusted providers, creates a more predictable operating model. Legal departments gain greater control over budgets, service levels, workflows, and reporting.
Instead of adapting to the preferences of multiple outside firms, corporations can establish a standardized approach that aligns with their own objectives and governance requirements.
Strengthen Security and Defensibility
Every time data is copied, transferred, or hosted in a new environment, risk increases.
Many organizations underestimate how many places their sensitive information resides during the course of litigation and investigations. Data may be stored by multiple law firms, several service providers, and a variety of third-party vendors.
Consolidating data under a trusted service provider significantly reduces that risk. Fewer copies of data exist. Access controls become easier to manage. Audit trails become more comprehensive. Security protocols can be standardized and consistently enforced.
For organizations managing sensitive employee information, trade secrets, financial records, or regulated data, these benefits are substantial.
A Smarter Long-Term Strategy
Today, corporate legal teams are managing overlapping matters, recurring custodians, and increasingly complex data ecosystems. As a result, organizations that centralize their litigation and investigations data are often able to reduce costs, improve efficiency, strengthen security, and maximize the value of prior work product.
The goal isn’t simply to host data in one place. It’s to create a strategic foundation that allows legal teams to move faster, make better decisions, and gain greater control over risk and spend.