What this guide helps you evaluate
legal operations teams managing high-volume discovery and preservation work where data volume, defensibility, labor and hosting charges materially affect matter cost. This cost planning guide helps organize a decision about legal records retention service.
This page is designed to help you compare the moving parts, organize due diligence and ask better questions before you commit money, sign a contract or change an operating process.
Define the business outcome, decision owner, expected term and the evidence needed to validate retention schedule and legal holds.
Normalize retention schedule and legal holds, records disposition and defensibility and repository migration fees and reporting before comparing proposals or internal options.
Keep assumptions separate from verified facts and record the source, date and owner for material requirements.
What to compare first
- retention schedule and legal holds
- records disposition and defensibility
- repository migration fees and reporting
- preservation and processing scope
- evidence chain and quality controls
- usage pricing and matter ownership
Step-by-step process
- 01
Set the planning horizon and baseline volume, headcount, transaction or asset assumptions.
- 02
Separate retention schedule and legal holds, records disposition and defensibility, repository migration fees and reporting into fixed, variable, one-time and contingent cost buckets.
- 03
Add internal labor, migration, training, advisory and compliance costs outside the quoted price.
- 04
Model base, higher-cost and lower-volume cases and identify the most sensitive input.
- 05
Convert the preferred case into an approval budget with contingency and review dates.
Common mistakes and risk checks
- over-collecting data without scope controls
- weak preservation evidence or chain of custody
- allowing hosting and review volume to grow without governance
- Treating a cost planning guide as a substitute for signed agreements, current official rules or qualified professional review.
Documents and evidence to collect
- matter scope and custodian list
- data-source inventory
- preservation protocol
- provider proposal and pricing schedule
Questions to ask before approval
- How is retention schedule and legal holds defined, measured and evidenced?
- What changes if records disposition and defensibility is higher or lower than the base case?
- Which fees, exclusions, implementation tasks or operating duties sit outside repository migration fees and reporting?