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Estimating the Cost of Review (Simplified Version)

By Jerry Bui

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Once you have processed your documents (extraction plus deduplication) and search terms have been applied, you must take at least two things into account when estimating the cost of review:

(1) page count
(2) file size

Most everyone asks for file count and I think this is a big mistake (unless you are performing a native file review where page counts are NOT available).

Page counts will give you speed of review (i.e. number of contract reviewers multiplied by their collective review rate, say, 25000 pages per hour). File counts don't help here because assignments containing an equal number of files may reflect an asymmetric page count. Therefore, 500 files in one assignment may go quickly for a reviewer while another batch of 500 files for the SAME reviewer may take much longer if page count is doubled.

Page counts will also give you cost of TIFF'ing and blowbacks (if this is the form of production or *gasp* review).

File size will give you the cost of electronic production since this is typically charged on a per gigabyte basis.

So when you are gathering statistics for estimating the cost of review, make sure you ask for (1) page count, and (2) file size.

Full post as published by E-Discovery In the Trenches on June 26, 2009 (boomark / email).