Law Department Management Blog
Some say litigation accounts for about 60 percent of outside counsel costs; others say that discovery accounts for about 60% of litigation costs; I wonder whether electronic discovery accounts for 60% of discovery costs!
Two practices worth noting: “Pfizer Inc. has hired a senior counsel [Laura Kibbe] to work full time with consultants [George Socha] to build a new e-discovery system from the ground up.” (Legal Times, Sept. 19, 2005 at 23) If a law department faces significant discovery costs for several years, investing in a saving oversight lawyer makes sense.
Second, Marathon Oil’s law department is placing a dedicated e-discovery coordinator at every subsidiary. I assume this means that the department christens and trains a client person to be the focal point for discovery requests and production from each participating subsidiary. (See my post of Aug. 5 about Sears and its discovery management and Sept.21, 2005 about Cisco and its e-discovery investment.)