Balancing financial constraints with the necessity of meeting legal obligations creates considerable strain on resources. Recurring cost overruns amplify the urgency to find a practical, sustainable solution. Here’s an example of how PLUSnxt’s approach to consolidated data management and customized PLUS billing system with RelativityOne enable organizations to effectively control, manage, and track their eDiscovery costs.
The Challenges
PLUSnxt recently assisted two different global corporations by helping them to optimize eDiscovery costs and budgets across their matters. Both companies had their eDiscovery data spread across multiple eDiscovery vendors through their relationships with various outside counsel. Both companies also had a lack of insight into data trends about their cases, which made it extremely difficult for them to budget costs effectively and resulted in them incurring unnecessary costs due to forgotten or inactive databases and projects that continue to incur expenses. The challenges associated with this scenario included:
- Data fragmentation due to eDiscovery data being distributed across multiple vendors and outside counsel, leading to redundant processes, inconsistent practices, and increased potential of data loss or breaches.
- Increased security risks as managing data across disparate platforms with varying security protocols increases the risk of unauthorized access, breaches, and compliance violations.
- Financial strain because of persistent cost overruns due to lack of centralized management and streamlined workflows that create budget pressures that are difficult to justify or predict.
- Inefficient and redundant workstreams and lack of standardization across vendors, resulting in delays, higher costs, and reduced productivity.
- Lack of cost visibility and control due to fragmented data management that makes it challenging to track expenses accurately, identify inefficiencies, or leverage economies of scale.
The Solution
PLUSnxt team of experts worked with the teams of both corporations to consolidate their eDiscovery data into their own RelativityOne instance, enabling them to benefit from volume-based discounts and normalized rates. It also enabled them to regularly review data trends (new cases, closing cases) to obtain valuable insights into budget forecasting. PLUSnxt’s approach to consolidated data management and its customized PLUS billing system with RelativityOne provided the following benefits:
- By consolidating all their data with PLUS both corporations were able to leverage their total data volume to qualify for volume-based discounts, significantly reducing per-unit costs.
- This centralization also led to normalized and potentially lower rates for eDiscovery services compared to the varied rates they were paying through different outside counsel agreements, ensuring the best possible pricing based on their buying power.
- Having all data in one place provided better visibility into spending trends and facilitates regular reviews to understand budget performance. This knowledge empowered both corporations to make informed decisions for future budgeting and avoid unexpected costs.
- Consolidation and regular communication with PLUSnxt helped both corporations identify and eliminate forgotten or inactive databases and projects that were unnecessarily incurring costs.
- By connecting their environment to RelativityOne and training internal staff, PLUSnxt enabled both corporations to perform their own data collections and auto-processing, leading to savings of well over $4 million per year for one of those corporate clients.
- Utilizing PLUSnxt's managed review team, whose services are competitively priced compared to many outside counsel firms, resulted in significant cost savings on document review – up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for one of those corporate clients.
- Consolidating on a platform like RelativityOne enabled both corporations to leverage its built-in technologies,ranging from standard analytics to generative AI, to create more streamlined and efficient workflows that drive down costs defensibly.
- PLUS’ customized billing options enabled law firm clients to submit tailored invoices that could be easily integrated with their clients’ existing billing processes.
The Benefits
PLUS’ approach to consolidated data management and its customized PLUS billing system with RelativityOne enabled these two global corporations to achieve significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. By consolidating all their eDiscovery data into their own RelativityOne instance, they benefited from volume-based discounts, normalized and lower rates, and enhanced budget forecasting capabilities. PLUSnxt’s customized billing options further enhanced efficiency by enabling law firms to submit invoices that seamlessly integrated with their clients’ existing billing processes. PLUSnxt’s application of RelativityOne’s built-in technologies and competitively priced managed review services, streamlined workflows and defensibly reduced costs – literally millions of dollars in savings!
