Legal Hold Pro

We have conducted a detailed analysis of the economic impact of Legal Hold Pro in an organization. This estimate takes into account labor cost reductions when comparing with a manual process versus a Legal Hold Pro implementation. What this analysis does not contemplate are the reduced risks and lower costs for data management, factors which further increase the value of deploying the system for managing the legal hold notification process.

Legal Hold Pro is an on-demand service that has no start-up costs. Unlike enterprise software, it can be used immediately and without investing in hardware and IT resources to get up and running. Also, Legal Hold Pro does not require training and support, since users usually take less than an hour to get started.

In analyzing the typical legal hold workflow for a mid-size corporate legal department with 5-6 legal holds per month and an average of 15 custodians per hold, the impact is huge. The analysis is modeled to meet the contemporary standard for legal hold preservation which includes drafting a hold notice, sending it via email, tracking custodian responses and sending quarterly reminders. When totaled, the manual hold notification process exceeded $87,000 in labor costs alone– or the equivalent of one full-time person.

By implementing Legal Hold Pro to automate routine processes, an organization can reduce the time associated with issuing and tracking hold notifications by an estimated 76 percent. At the anticipated volume of holds, the organization utilizes an annual subscription plan of $18,000 annually for Legal Hold Pro. Adding labor costs associated when using Legal Hold Pro, the total cost is approximately $22,181.

Based on workflow estimates from information provided by users, an $18,000 investment in Legal Hold Pro yielded a total economic benefit of approximately $47,000 – a calculated ROI of 260.2 percent. The economic impact will further increase over time as the number of legal holds accumulates year over year. In addition, the economic model excludes the added value of reduced risk of sanctions and lower downstream e-discovery costs.