Thought: The "Un-compressed" Processing Myth

The eDiscovery market is booming and companies are springing up all over the place offering various services from collections to processing to hosting, etc. With this increasing pool of vendors comes very different and sometimes confusing pricing models.

One of the most common models we come across in competitive bids is charging customers for the “un-compressed” or “extracted” size. What does this mean exactly? It means that what you think may be 100GB of email could in fact become 200GB of email and attachments or more AFTER the data is processed. Essentially, this could double or even quadruple your eDiscovery budget.

Don’t let this happen to you! Vendors that use this model are providing their clients with misleading information. The “un-compressed” size is a myth. For example, lets say you have an email with 10 embedded attachments that total 10MB (megabytes). When that email is processed with an vendor’s eDiscovery software, generally, it will extract each individual attachment as it’s own record as well as the original email with the 10 embedded attachments. The email alone will be ~10MB and the extracted attachments will also total 10MB, so the total size of that email and it’s extracted attachments has more than doubled to ~20MB. The true size of the email AND it’s attachments is actually ~10MB, because the email size is inflated due to the embedded attachments. This is why some vendors charge for the “un-compressed” size, because on the surface it actually looks like the data HAS doubled, when in fact nothing has really changed.

As more clients become educated to the sometimes very confusing world of eDiscovery pricing this model will eventually go away. For now, be on the lookout for this model and ask your vendors if they charge on the total and “compressed” size or if they follow the “un-compressed/extracted” model. Knowing how they price ahead of time could keep your eDiscovery budget in check.

Posted by Logik Systems