The cost of eDiscovery has increased alongside the number of places where businesses store information. Only a few years ago, legal teams focused primarily on email, network drives, and office documents when it came to document preservation. Today, that model is completely outdated due to the numerous channels that businesses use to communicate, collaborate, and store digital data. As helpful as these channels might be, there is no doubt that the cost of eDiscovery continues to increase along with the number of channels a business relies on.
Reducing eDiscovery costs is no longer just about reviewing fewer documents. It starts with understanding where your data lives and using technology that can bring those sources together. Organizations that continue to treat each platform as a separate system often spend more time searching for information than analyzing it. Hanzo Illuminate can help keep your costs down by not only storing all your data but also making it simple to filter and search.
Fragmented data means relevant information is spread across multiple systems that were never designed to work together, and it can impact eDiscovery costs. One conversation may begin in Microsoft Teams, continue in Slack, reference a Google Drive document, and end with tasks assigned through Asana.
Each additional platform increases the complexity of discovery. Legal teams must identify every potential source, determine whether relevant information exists, and collect data without disrupting normal business operations. That says nothing about the time-consuming task of wading through data that has been duplicated across multiple platforms.
Business communication no longer follows a predictable path. With so many different platforms available to even the smallest of organizations, it should come as no surprise that the cost of eDiscovery is skyrocketing. Traditional eDiscovery processes that focus primarily on email no longer capture the complete picture due to the following reasons.
The financial impact of fragmented data extends well beyond collecting information. Every disconnected system adds work throughout the discovery process.
Before collecting information, legal teams must determine where relevant data exists. This often requires working with multiple departments, reviewing retention policies, and coordinating with IT staff.
Without confidence about where relevant information is stored, organizations often collect more data than necessary. This collect-everything approach increases processing costs and creates larger review sets, and it is entirely unnecessary.
Reviewing data is one of the largest expenses related to eDiscovery, and when information comes from disconnected systems, reviewers spend additional time reconstructing conversations and connecting related documents.
Fragmented systems also increase the likelihood that important information will be overlooked. A relevant document may exist, but if nobody knows where to search, it may never become part of the discovery process.
Hanzo Illuminate is designed for today’s distributed data environment. Rather than focusing only on email and traditional documents, Illuminate helps legal teams search and review information across collaboration platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Confluence, Asana, and other modern applications.
One of Illuminate’s biggest advantages is its ability to follow relationships between communications and linked content. Instead of treating chats, documents, and shared files as isolated pieces of information, it preserves the context that connects them. This gives reviewers a more complete understanding of conversations while reducing the time needed to reconstruct events. If you are ready to explore how Illuminate can help your organization and reduce the impact of fragmented data sources on eDiscovery costs, reach out to a Hanzo representative today.
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