I was recently reunited with a friend from my childhood. He is now a well respected attorney and he has won some very noteworthy cases. During a brief discussion about the legal industry he commented on "how expensive eDiscovery was". I wasn't meeting with my friend for the purpose of selling him on our services so I simply agreed with him and said, "it certainly can be expensive" and moved on to another topic.

However, his comment has stuck with me. Why is it that eDiscovery has a stigma attached to it as being so expensive? There are lots of expensive things out there that are discussed with great enthusiasm without so much as a word related to the cost of the item. Sports cars for instance... I have several friends that have VERY EXPENSIVE sports cars but when they talk about their car they never talk about the price, instead they talk about the new upgrades, the speed, the excitement it provides them. Homes are the same way... Beautiful luxury homes are never described by their owners as being too pricey or a major burden on their lifestyle, they are instead "Works of Art" that they are proud of and take every opportunity to show off.

Honestly, the only times I hear negative comments about these types of things are when the product didn't live up to the owners expectations or if the owner never saw the value in the item. These negative feelings are typically the result of the buyer being OVER SOLD and UNDERWHELMED. I would venture to guess this is also true with eDiscovery. With so many tools and platforms on the market claiming to solve all your eDiscovery problems, it isn't difficult to see how the eDiscovery process has lost its value.

Let's look at this from a different perspective... If a homicide occurs and the investigating police detectives arrive on scene but rather than collect any evidence from the crime scene they instead hand out complex questionnaires to everyone present as well as every resident in a 5 mile radius to gather any information about how the crime was committed and who committed it. Certainly, they will receive a ton of information that they will have to sort through. Some may be good but most will be a waste of time and unless someone actually observed the crime take place or had the suspect confess to them directly the odds of the detectives solving the case are very slim.

Would you be impressed with that type of response if you were a member of the victims family? Would you be more likely to believe that the "Census worker approach" would uncover the truth or would you demand to have the best detective assigned to the case, someone who has specialized training and a wealth of experience in homicide investigations, forensic evidence collection and analysis? I would hope that the second option would be the unanimous choice!

So why do so many law firms and corporations take the first approach with eDiscovery? The evidence is there, but increasing the complexity of the "survey" and expanding the area to be "questioned" will only increase the number of attorneys that need to review the low value results and increase the costs and time of the investigation while the real evidence becomes contaminated and ignored back at the scene of the crime...