Atlas eDiscovery Cost Forecasting and Management

Overview

IBM Atlas eDiscovery Cost Forecasting and Management allows attorneys and legal controllers to project future discovery costs to avoid expense deviations and improve negotiations with legal adversaries. It includes comprehensive reports and intuitive dashboards to assess discovery costs by fiscal period. This decision support provides a shared view for legal, finance, and business partners to avoid surprises and drive decision making.

Single matter discovery cost control: Atlas eDiscovery Cost Forecasting and Management automatically calculates discovery costs for a matter at its outset. Discovery cost estimates are continuously updated as matter facts change so that attorneys can determine earliest and optimized matter resolution. Attorneys can control cost and effectively negotiate smaller scope through history, forecasts and scenario analysis. Legal teams can balance risk and cost in making narrow vs. wide discovery decisions.

Portfolio discovery cost control: With accurate forecasts, Atlas eDiscovery Cost Forecasting and Management enables coordinated expense timing and high cost matter visibility with finance, legal and business peers.

7 reasons to use Atlas eDiscovery to control discovery costs:

Discovery and review have ballooned to 50-70% of legal costs
Total cost is central to case strategy — yet without a reliable cost estimate, it is difficult to make good decisions
Without good cost understanding, legal executives can't see or control impending costs across the portfolio
Getting cost visibility requires data most attorneys don't have, such as key matter facts, pricing and historical matter context to calibrate the likely course of costs
Outside counsel is insensitive to costs and can't reliably estimate data volume
Corporate counsel is ill-equipped to routinely negotiate because they lack information to make a compelling burden argument
Escalating data volume is driving high costs — and the legal holds process can contribute to higher volume if Legal relies on IT to retain all data and disable routine disposal, perpetuating the vicious cycle

Atlas eDiscovery Cost Forecasting and Management Features and Benefits

Benefit	Features and Capabilities
Track continuous, accurate discovery costs	Instantly estimate discovery costs when the matter is scoped to make better strategy decisions Set litigation profiles, costs, and budget models for your company Automatically track actual matter facts such as custodian pool, data sources, and collection volumes in Atlas Discovery for Legal — no data entry is needed to project cost Predict matter discovery cost trajectory by leveraging current matter scope and historical facts Define litigation and cost profiles by matter type for finer grained view
Improved negotiating power to reduce scope	Iterate scenarios and options to make fully-informed arguments and stronger recommendations Save a scenario as the new best stance on production scope Use cost data offensively to reduce collection and production volume. Make more routine and compelling burden and cost shifting arguments sooner with push-button reports Publish graphical cost reports for counsel and courts Use cost calculator to estimate the other party's costs and better prepare for settlement discussions
Resolve matters earlier	Provide continuous cost assessment that enables optimal settlement decisions throughout the case
Enable finance to control fiscal period impact	Detect potential future cost spikes from changes in custodian and collection volume, by matter and fiscal period Present forecasts by fiscal period to finance and business partners to avoid surprises and drive decision making