The High Cost of Chaos: 5 Ways a Proactive Litigation Playbook Reclaims Your Budget
In the world of legal operations, every veteran has a darkest hour story. For Greg Gruic, a former engineer turned legal ops leader at Marathon Petroleum, that moment arrived early in his career. His team had just implemented a new on-premise application and, within a few short months, they hit a staggering 100 terabytes of collected data—much of it redundant, duplicated mailboxes sitting in expensive storage simply because they were "preserving" everything just in case.
"It wasn't sustainable," Gruic noted in a recent episode of the Data Xposure podcast. His engineering brain saw the flaw: the traditional litigation model isn't just inefficient; it’s a logistical nightmare that drains both the company’s budget and the staff’s capacity.
To take back control, legal departments must stop firefighting and start engineering their processes. Here are five ways a proactive, documented litigation playbook can slash costs and empower your team to get more done.
Listen to the podcast episode here.
Stop throwing data over the fence.
The most expensive habit in litigation is the data dump. This happens when an organization, fearful of missing a relevant document, collects a massive, unfiltered dataset and sends it directly to outside counsel.
The Cost of Chaos: Law firms are built on billable hours. When you send them the kitchen sink, you are effectively paying partner-track attorneys to sift through digital noise—newsletters, spam, and irrelevant CC e-mail chains.
The Playbook Fix: Your playbook should mandate an internal first-pass review. By leveraging internal eDiscovery tools to apply early-onset keywords and date ranges before data leaves your environment, you ensure that outside counsel only bills you for high-value legal analysis. This doesn’t just save money; it sharpens your legal strategy from day one.
Implement in-place preservation.
In the darkest hour scenario Gruic described, data was being collected to preserve it. If a custodian was on two different legal holds, their mailbox was collected twice. This created a massive, expensive storage footprint for data that already existed elsewhere on the company servers.
The Cost of Chaos: Every byte of duplicated data carries a storage cost and a management burden. High-volume duplication slows down networks and complicates the chain of custody.
The Playbook Fix: Move toward a preserve in-place model. Modern tools allow you to flag a mailbox, OneDrive, or SharePoint site, preventing its deletion–but without actually copying or moving the data. By keeping data where it natively lives until it is truly needed for review, you eliminate unnecessary storage fees and reduce the technical risk of data corruption during transfer.
Use a "bold engagement letter" tactic with outside counsel.
A playbook shouldn't just govern your internal team; it should dictate the terms of your external partnerships. Gruic suggests a bold tactic: making your technology a requirement for your vendors.
The Playbook Fix: Update your engagement letters to require outside counsel to work within your environment or leverage your preferred review partners.
The Result: Gruic proposes a simple rule: if a firm insists on hosting data in their own expensive proprietary environment, they assume the storage costs. This creates a powerful incentive for firms to be more surgical. Suddenly, they become much more interested in narrow date ranges and specific custodians when the hosting bill is coming out of their margin. This flips the relationship from "vendor-driven" to "client-controlled."
Transition to an evergreen quarterly review process.
Many legal departments have a litigation manual, but it’s often a static PDF gathering digital dust. In a world where data types change every six months, a static playbook is a liability.
The Efficiency Gain: Technology evolves faster than litigation. Gruic advocates for a quarterly cadence for playbook reviews. This allows the team to account for new data sources—like ephemeral messaging (WhatsApp) or AI-generated content—before they become a crisis during a discovery request.
The Human Benefit: A documented, repeatable process saves your employees from decision fatigue. When a new matter hits, your paralegals and IT partners don't have to scramble to define the workflow. They follow the" script, which reduces stress, minimizes human error, and allows your team to handle a higher volume of matters with the same headcount.
5. Build the "what’s in it for me?” bridge with IT.
A legal ops playbook is only as strong as its weakest departmental link. To get IT and other teams to follow your lead, you have to speak their language. Explain why your proposed solution is good for them too.
The Strategy: Don't just frame legal holds or in-place preservationas a legal requirement. Frame them as a solution to IT’s headaches–no more need to collect and store terabytes upon terabytes of data indefinitely.
The Playbook Fix: When you document your preserve in-pace and internal review processes, show IT how much server space you are saving them. Show the network team how you’ve reduced the costs and administrative headaches caused by massive data transfers. By aligning your playbook with the goals of other departments (like reducing storage costs or improving security), you turn potential roadblocks into active partners.
Reclaiming the narrative.
As Greg Gruic’s journey from engineer to Legal Ops leader shows, the goal isn't just to follow the law—it’s to optimize the business. By moving from a reactive, "collect-everything" mindset to a proactive, documented playbook, you stop being a cost center and start being a center of excellence. A seamless, interconnected litigation process doesn't just protect the company in court; it protects the company’s bottom line and its most valuable resource: its people’s time.
