Arlington, Virginia · Washington DC, Maryland & Nationwide
Pro-Legal Services, Inc. provides eDiscovery services, managed document review, and eDiscovery hosting for law firms, corporate legal departments, and government agencies, and clients who move to us typically reduce eDiscovery costs by 20 to 30 percent measured against their prior vendor invoices. Most of that reduction is structural rather than negotiated. These are the five levers that actually change what a matter costs.
1. Cull before you process, not after
Processing is billed on raw volume ingested, so every gigabyte removed before processing is removed from every downstream cost as well. De-duplication, de-NISTing, date filtering, domain exclusions, and search term analytics routinely take a large share out of a collection. The cheapest document in any matter is the one never processed.
2. Scope custodians before anyone touches a device
Custodians added at the start multiply through collection, processing, hosting, and review. One extra custodian is not one extra cost, it is four. Interview first, collect second, and resist the instinct to collect broadly on the theory that it can be narrowed later.
3. Watch hosting, because it recurs
Collection and processing are billed once. Hosting is billed every month the data sits on the platform, which means a matter open for two years pays it twenty-four times. Firms that scrutinize review rates while ignoring hosting frequently find hosting became the largest line on the matter. Ask what it costs to archive inactive data and what it costs to restore it.
4. Match the review method to the population
Continuous active learning and AI document review reduce the number of documents a person reads, which is where the money sits on a large population. On a small, well-scoped collection the setup effort can outweigh the saving. A vendor who recommends the same method regardless of volume is recommending their margin.
5. Read the whole rate card, not the per-gigabyte number
Project management hours, per-seat user licenses, minimum monthly commitments, data expansion during processing, rush and weekend surcharges, and the egress fee for moving the matter elsewhere. A competitive per-gigabyte rate with four of these attached costs more than a higher rate with none.
Where Our Pricing Difference Comes From
Larger vendors fund sales organizations, account management layers, and corporate overhead through their rates, and that cost reaches you as a per-gigabyte number that looks technical but is organizational. Pro-Legal is a family-run boutique that carries none of it. Transparent rate cards up front, no per-gigabyte markup, no per-seat licenses, no minimum commitments, and usage-based pricing where you pay for what you use. We will also tell you when a matter does not need a hosted review platform at all — a vendor whose revenue depends on hosting rarely will.
Related reading: our article on why a boutique eDiscovery provider charges less covers the cost structure in full, eDiscovery for small law firms covers terms that fit smaller matters, and AI document review for litigation covers method selection.
We deliver eDiscovery across Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia, including Alexandria, Fairfax, Tysons, Northern Virginia, Richmond, Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Baltimore, and Annapolis, and support matters nationwide, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, and Wilmington.
Want to know what your current matter should cost? Contact Pro-Legal Services, Inc., 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209, at info@pro-legal.com or 202-955-9400. Send us a recent invoice and the matter profile and we will tell you where the money is going. Available 24/7/365.