eDiscovery IT Support for Law Firms | Litigation Technology & ESI Management

eDiscovery Infrastructure for Law Firms

Modern litigation generates enormous volumes of electronically stored information. A single custodian can produce tens of gigabytes of email, documents, chat messages, and cloud files. Multiply that across a dozen custodians in a commercial dispute, and the IT demands of eDiscovery quickly exceed what most mid-size firms are equipped to handle internally.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26(b) and 34 govern the discovery of ESI, and Rule 37(e) imposes sanctions for failure to preserve it. State courts, including Texas, have adopted analogous rules. Competent handling of ESI is no longer optional — it is a litigation requirement backed by case law that has produced adverse inference instructions, monetary sanctions, and default judgments against parties who mishandled electronic evidence.

Your firm’s IT infrastructure must support the full eDiscovery lifecycle: preservation, collection, processing, review, and production. Gaps at any stage create spoliation risk, increase costs, and undermine your clients’ positions.

Data Preservation and Legal Holds

A litigation hold must be implemented as soon as litigation is reasonably anticipated — not when a complaint is filed. The obligation extends to all potentially relevant data sources, including those that are easy to overlook:

• Custodian notification and acknowledgment — Identified custodians must receive written hold notices and confirm receipt. IT must track which custodians have acknowledged and follow up with those who have not
• Suspension of deletion policies — Automated deletion rules in email, collaboration platforms, and backup systems must be suspended for data within the scope of the hold. Microsoft 365 retention policies, for example, will purge deleted items after a configurable period unless a hold is applied
• Cloud and SaaS data sources — Slack channels, Teams conversations, SharePoint sites, OneDrive files, and third-party SaaS platforms used by custodians are all discoverable. IT must identify these sources and apply preservation controls
• Mobile device preservation — Text messages, WhatsApp conversations, and other mobile communications are increasingly relevant in litigation. Preservation may require enabling device backup, deploying mobile archiving software, or performing forensic imaging
• Documentation — Every preservation action must be documented with dates, scope, and responsible parties. This documentation becomes critical if the opposing party challenges the adequacy of your preservation efforts

We configure litigation hold workflows within your firm’s managed IT environment, integrating with Microsoft 365, document management systems, and backup infrastructure to ensure holds are applied completely and verifiably.

ESI Collection and Processing

Collection must be forensically defensible. An attorney copying files to a thumb drive is not a sound collection methodology — it does not preserve metadata, does not establish chain of custody, and is vulnerable to challenge.

• Endpoint collection — Targeted collection from custodian workstations, laptops, and local drives using forensic tools that preserve file metadata (created, modified, last accessed dates) and generate hash values for authentication
• Email collection — Extraction from Exchange Online, Gmail, or on-premises mail servers with date range and custodian filtering, preserving folder structure, attachments, and header information
• Cloud platform collection — Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, Google Vault, and equivalent tools enable collection from SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and other cloud sources with audit trails
• Processing and deduplication — Raw collected data is processed to remove system files, extract text and metadata from documents, deduplicate across custodians, and apply date and keyword filters to reduce the volume before review
• Chain of custody documentation — Every step from identification through processing is documented: who collected what, from where, when, using which tools, and with what hash verification

Review Platform Infrastructure

Most firms conducting document review use Relativity or a comparable platform. The IT requirements differ significantly depending on the hosting model:

• Relativity Server (on-premises) — Requires dedicated SQL Server databases, processing servers with substantial RAM and CPU, web server infrastructure, and a storage architecture that can handle terabytes of case data. We size, deploy, and manage Relativity Server environments for firms that need on-premises control
• RelativityOne (cloud) — Relativity’s SaaS platform eliminates infrastructure management but requires careful tenant configuration, user provisioning, and integration with your firm’s identity management. Migration from on-premises Relativity to RelativityOne involves data transfer planning, workspace restructuring, and user retraining
• Review workspace configuration — Setting up workspaces with appropriate fields, views, layouts, and coding panels for each matter. Poorly configured workspaces slow down reviewers and increase costs
• Technology-assisted review (TAR/CAL) — Continuous active learning workflows require initial setup, seed set preparation, and ongoing validation. The IT infrastructure must support the computational demands of machine learning-based prioritization
• Analytics — Email threading, near-duplicate identification, concept clustering, and communication pattern analysis reduce review time and improve consistency. These features require proper configuration and sufficient processing capacity

Our team manages Relativity environments as part of our broader law firm IT services, handling the infrastructure so your litigation team can focus on the substantive review.

Production

Producing documents in the correct format, with proper numbering and redactions, is a technical exercise that requires precision:

• Format compliance — Productions must match the specifications in the ESI protocol or court order. Common formats include single-page TIFF with extracted text, native file production, and PDF. Each has different technical requirements
• Bates numbering — Sequential document numbering across productions must be consistent and gap-free. The numbering system is configured at the workspace level and must be coordinated across multiple productions in the same case
• Redaction tools — Privileged content, personally identifiable information, and other protected material must be redacted in a way that is permanent and does not leave recoverable data beneath the redaction mark
• Load files — Productions include load files (DAT, OPT, or similar formats) that map document metadata, text, and images for import into the receiving party’s review tool. Malformed load files create delays and discovery disputes
• Quality control — Every production must be QC-checked for missing pages, blank images, incorrect redactions, and load file errors before delivery

Data Volumes and Storage Management

Large litigation matters generate storage demands that strain standard firm infrastructure:

• Active matter storage — A single antitrust or securities case can produce 500 GB to several terabytes of processed data, plus review databases and production sets. Your storage architecture must accommodate this without degrading performance for the rest of the firm
• Archival of completed matters — Closed case data must be retained per your firm’s retention policy but moved to lower-cost archival storage to free up primary capacity. Our data protection services include tiered storage management for law firms
• Cost management — Cloud storage costs for long-running cases accumulate quickly. We help firms project storage costs during case budgeting and implement compression, deduplication, and tiered storage to control expenses

Cross-Border and Multi-Jurisdictional Considerations

International matters add complexity to every phase of the eDiscovery process:

• Data sovereignty — ESI collected from custodians in the EU, UK, or other jurisdictions with data protection laws may be subject to restrictions on cross-border transfer. The GDPR, in particular, requires a lawful basis for transferring personal data outside the EEA, and standard contractual clauses or adequacy decisions may be needed
• EU blocking statutes — Some EU member states have blocking statutes that prohibit the disclosure of certain business information to foreign courts. IT and legal teams must coordinate on filtering and redaction workflows that comply with both U.S. discovery obligations and foreign data protection requirements
• Multi-jurisdiction holds — Cases involving custodians in multiple countries require hold notices and preservation procedures that account for local language requirements, labor and employment restrictions on monitoring employee data, and varying data retention regulations

Back to Law Firm IT Services