SLAs v. OLAs v. UCs

Service Level Agreements are often signed between law firms or client, and e-discovery vendors. The agreements will be based on the vendor providing services to a client.

If the service provider engages a third party to provide the necessary service, this new agreement may be referred to as a OLA, or an operational level agreement. This should track how server resources are dedicated to new project.

SLAs may allow for modifications at fixed periods of time. The agreement should specify detail the services to be provided. The SLA should address how interruptions in the vendor’s services will compensated for.

An underpinning contract (UC) will track how the third party provides services to the vendor.