Build More Accurate Document Review Budgets and Timelines with Metrics

In the world of e-discovery, management guru Peter Drucker’s maxim holds more weight than ever: "If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it." For legal professionals, treating e-discovery as a business process—complete with tracking and optimizing metrics—is the only way to ensure repeatability, defensibility, and cost-efficiency.

Since document review typically accounts for 73% of e-discovery budgets, reducing these costs is the most direct path to controlling legal spend. Here is a breakdown of the foundational metrics you should track to master your project timelines and budgets.

3 Essential Pre-Review Metrics

Before kicking off a review, you must understand the data "funnel." Tracking these three data points across multiple projects allows you to create highly accurate rules of thumb for future litigation.

1. Data Volume per Custodian: Track the total gigabytes identified, the number of custodians, and the date range. Over time, calculate the average data volume per custodian per month to estimate the scale of new matters early.
2. Documents per Gigabyte: Because 1 GB can contain anywhere from 2,500 to 15,000+ documents (depending on whether it's mostly text, email, or heavy PDFs), tracking your "typical" document density helps you move from measuring GBs to measuring the actual workload.
3. Deduplication Ratio: Basic deduplication often eliminates up to 40% of total documents. Knowing your historical ratio allows you to predict the "true" review set size immediately after processing.

The Master Formula for Budgeting

Once you have your refined document count (after deduplication and culling), you can use this simple calculation to project your costs and resource needs:

$$\frac{\text{Total Documents}}{\text{Review Rate (Docs/Hour)}} \times \text{Hourly Rate} = \text{Estimated Project Cost}$$

• To Calculate Person-Hours: Divide total documents by your team's average review pace.
• To Calculate Timeline: Divide total person-hours by the number of reviewers on the team.

Strategic Insight: The Proportionality Check

By running these numbers early, legal leaders can determine if the cost of discovery is disproportionate to the value of the case. If the projected review cost exceeds the potential settlement or judgment, it may be time to seek a settlement for purely economic reasons rather than continuing a high-cost discovery battle.

For a deeper dive into optimizing your review process, you can download the full whitepaper: 14 Pivotal Metrics for Reducing Document Review Costs.

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