Email collection and reduction

The Challenge

A law firm asked eDiscovery Collab to help them collect the emails, speed up the review process. Their goal: get rid of junk, run focused searches, and prepare review batches from multiple email inboxes.

The initial quantity expected was around 80 GB of data from email inboxes. But when the files hit the litigation database, the total was closer to 156 GB (nearly double) totalling 407,254 documents. That’s a problem when time and costs are on the line.

Using the right tools and a clear plan, we reduced the volume of documents stored in the database and reduced the number of documents for legal review. 

How We Helped

We worked with the law firm’s client to collect the email inboxes quickly and efficiently without burdening them.  That way, the law firm could stay focused on the legal work.

Once uploaded, the database held 407,254 documents. To reduce this massive volume, we used a multi-step approach:

• Deduplication: We removed 78,716 duplicates, bringing the total to 328,538 documents.

• Junk culling: Working closely with the legal team, we filtered out things like logos, subscription messages, and emails from irrelevant senders removing 175,954 documents.

Before deleting anything, we securely archived a full backup - just in case anything needed to be restored. After our work, the final set was down to 152,584 documents.  But it doesn’t stop there, the next step was keyword searching:

• Positive Keyword Searches: We ran targeted keyword searches to find the material that mattered, totalling 90,992 documents for review by the legal team.

Why Litigation Databases Help

This process didn’t just tidy up the data. It delivered real value:

• Fewer documents: We reduced the count from 407,254 to 152,584—that’s a 63% cut.

• Lower hosting costs: With less data to store, the law firm’s client saved more than 50% in annual hosting fees.

• Faster review time: Without this cleanup, lawyers would have had to review an extra 316,262 documents. At 60 docs per hour, that’s over 5,271 hours of extra time.

By cutting through the noise, eDiscovery Collab helped the legal team work faster, focus on what’s important, and keep costs down.