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New study takes a systematic look at preservation expenses across a wide sample of businesses.
Sherry Karabin, Law Technology News
March 27, 2014
Many in the legal profession say the proposed changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37(e) could help organizations lower preservation costs since only knowing or willful destruction of ESI would be penalized.
How big of a relief would that be? William H. J. Hubbard, assistant law professor at The University of Chicago Law School recently completed his Preservation Costs Survey, providing new insight into the issue. An entry on K&L Gates News & Updates highlights some of the key points from Hubbards work.
The survey includes data from 128 companies of all sizes and a variety of industries and is said to be the first, and to date only, systematic effort to measure the extent and costs of preservation activity across a broad sample of companies.
- Over 79 percent of respondents report a great extent or moderate extent of preservation burdens.
- For the largest companies estimated costs exceed $40 million per company per year.
- On average, across all survey respondents, slightly less than one-half of all preserved data is ever collected, processed and reviewed and even less is produced or eventually used in litigation.
The survey concludes, Rule changes with even modest effects would generate meaningful cost savings and for the largest companies in the sample, a three percent reduction only in employee time spent on litigation holds would equate to savings of over $1 million per company per year.
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