Am Law 200 Firm Cuts Ediscovery Costs 53% and Completes 400K-Document Privilege Review in Six Weeks with DISCO

An Am Law 200 firm faced a time- and cost-sensitive privilege review during a complex bankruptcy involving 150+ defendants and roughly 400,000 documents. COVID-19 made its usual offshore reviewers unavailable, and an in-house review was estimated to cost far more than the firm could justify while monopolizing associates' time under a tight deadline.

The firm engaged DISCO, migrating its databases to DISCO Ediscovery and contracting the DISCO Review team to handle the privilege review. DISCO completed a rapid data migration and used DISCO AI alongside its review team to prioritize and process documents within the guaranteed timeframe.

Reviewers averaged 71 documents/hour versus 25/hour in-house, completing the work at a cost-effective per-document rate. The engagement cost $373,000 (about 53% less than in-house), delivered an 82% time savings, cut review volume by 51% via AI, and produced a privilege log with minimal tag overrides, drawing no challenges from opposing counsel.

• AI-assisted prioritization can cut review volume by half while maintaining accuracy (minimal tag overrides).
• Rapid data migration enabled the firm to meet a court deadline despite losing its offshore review capacity to COVID-19.
• Outsourcing to a specialized ediscovery review team nearly tripled reviewer throughput (71 vs. 25 docs/hour) versus in-house staffing.