EDRM's Budget Calculators

EDRM makes several different budget calculators available on its site, and today it released a new three in one calculator.

1. The Standards Calculator compare the cost estimates of vendors against one another and against a baseline.

2. The Proposed Calculator allows vendors to show the additional cost savings they think they can make.

3. The Baseline Calculator is for the client's pricing model.

The calculator is actually an Excel spreadsheet which can be downloaded here: http://www.edrm.net/projects/metrics/budget-calculators

The spreadsheet lists different vendor proposals on different worksheets. The worksheet named, 'Cover' is where different variables can be inputted including the number of custodians and the number of share drives. The calculator was developed by Casey Flaherty, the former in-house counsel for Kia Motors and the founder of company that helps law firms use technology in a more efficient manner, so the default rates it gives are revealing:

1. 1,000 documents per GB

2. 85% of documents get removed by Early Case Assessment

3. 40 document decisions per hour (issue coding in addition to determining whether or not a document is responsive). The rate for foreign language documents is cut in half, because the reviewer must work using multiple languages.

4. 12 pages per document.

Be sure not to miss Flaherty's notes appended to individual cells on this worksheet, and the sliding scales next to the variables.

The costs are estimated on the data volume standards and competing fees submitted by the vendors including:

1. Custodian collection price per hour.

2. Share collection price per hour.

3. Travel price per hour.

4. Ingestion price.

5. ECA price.

6. Extraction price.

7. Near-line storage price.

8. Hosting price.

9. Additional fees for consulting, user licenses and labor.

Alternate pricing is available for vendors who which to charge based on a fee for an entire collection or an amount charged for a day's work, as well as Technology Assisted Review (based on GBs or docs) and bundled reviews.