September 17, 2007

A new Daniel Fisher article in Forbes that isn't online yet ("The Data Explosion", Oct. 1) has this vignette:

Forrester Research estimates the e-discovery business totaled $1.5 billion last year and is on track to hit $4.8 billion by 2011.

It's expensive, too. At H5's Washington conference Breyer was shocked to hear discovery in a routine case might cost $4 million. "We can't do that," the Supreme Court justice spluttered. "If it really costs millions of dollars, then you're going to drive out of the litigation system people who ought to be there." Some in the audience snickered; $4 million sounded cheap. A Verizon Communications lawyer told a federal judiciary panel in January that his company hired some 225 lawyers and spent $14 million to search 2.4 million documents just to determine if they were protected by the attorney-client privilege.