First administered in December of 2018 and conducted four times during the last two years with 334 individual responses, the semi-annual eDiscovery Pricing Survey highlights pricing on selected collection, processing, and review tasks. The aggregate results of all surveys as shared in the provided comparative charts may be helpful for understanding pricing and its impact on purchasing behavior on selected services over time.
Based on the complexity of data and legal discovery, it is a continual challenge to fully understand what is representative of industry-standard pricing for the delivery of eDiscovery products and services. With this challenge in mind, the semi-annual eDiscovery Pricing Survey is designed to provide insight into eDiscovery pricing through the lens of 15 specific questions answered by legal, business, security, and information professionals operating in the eDiscovery ecosystem. The summer 2020 survey was open from May 11, 2020, until May 20, 2020, and had 105 respondents share their understanding of the pricing of eDiscovery services.
One of the key revision and decision areas that business, legal, and IT professionals in the eDiscovery ecosystem are currently having to consider is how they plan for and execute the core eDiscovery task of review in today’s new world. From review market sizing to remote review decisions, the following update provides context and considerations that may be helpful for eDiscovery decision-makers as they consider the critical eDiscovery task of review during 2020.
In the spring of 2020, 51.2% of respondents viewed budgetary constraints as potentially having the greatest business impact on their business in the next six months. This percentage is the highest of all concerns represented in the survey and also is the highest rating for any business performance concern since the inception of the survey. This is also the tenth time in eighteen surveys that the issue of budgetary constraints has been the top concern or tied for the top concern by survey respondents.
In the spring of 2020, 150 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey participants chose to answer at least one of the optional business operational metric survey questions in the quarterly survey. Exactly 26% of survey respondents reported Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) as decreasing in the spring of 2020. This is a significant increase from the 10% reporting MRR as decreasing in the winter of 2020 and is the highest percentage of respondents reporting MRR as decreasing since the introduction of business operational metric questions to the eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey in the winter of 2019.
Based on the aggregate results of eighteen past eDiscovery Business Confidence Surveys, the following findings and charted overviews of responses to survey questions may be helpful for understanding the collective mindset of many industry experts regarding their confidence in the business of eDiscovery between early 2016 and today.
This is the eighteenth quarterly eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey conducted by ComplexDiscovery. It is also the first time the survey has been conducted in a time of worldwide crisis such as today’s current global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. 2,089 individual responses have been received from legal, business, and technology professionals across the eDiscovery ecosystem since the inception of the survey in early 2016. 172 respondents shared their opinions as part of the spring 2020 survey.
Since January 2016, more than 1,900 individual responses to seventeen quarterly eDiscovery Business Confidence surveys have been received from legal, business, and technology professionals across the eDiscovery ecosystem. This spring survey will provide important insight into the business confidence of executive leaders, operational managers, and tactical execution professionals as we collectively seek to understand the impact of the current global COVID-19 pandemic on the business of eDiscovery.
For mergers currently pending or that may be proposed, the DOJ Antitrust Division is requesting from merging parties an additional 30 days to timing agreements to complete its review of transactions after the parties have complied with document requests. If circumstances require, the Division may revisit its timing agreements with merging parties in light of further developments.
“Everlaw is changing the way legal teams uncover the truth buried in mountains of data and documents,” said Steven Sinofsky, board partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Everlaw has already established itself as a leader in the $11 billion ediscovery market, and promises to make a lasting impact defining modern work solutions for litigators.”