The Volume Problem
E-discovery has transformed legal practice. What was once boxes of paper is now terabytes of electronic data. Document production deadlines are court-ordered. Missing them triggers sanctions and case-altering consequences.
- Volume overwhelming - Terabytes per matter, millions of documents
- Deadline pressure - Court-ordered deadlines with sanctions for failure
- Consistency impossible - Reviewer fatigue creates inconsistent redactions
- Cost explosion - Contract reviewers at $50/hour, scaling linearly with volume
Document Volumes by Matter Size
Small case
10,000-50,000 documents
Medium case
50,000-500,000 documents
Large case
500,000-5,000,000 documents
Mega-litigation
5,000,000+ documents
5 million documents at 20 minutes each equals 1.9 million hours - that is 950 person-years of work.
Am Law 100 Document Production
A major law firm handling bet-the-company litigation received a production request for 2 million documents with a 60-day deadline. Even with 100 contract reviewers working full-time, it was barely achievable.
Cost: $2 million for review alone. Consistency: impossible across 100 reviewers.
Discovery Sanctions
A party unable to redact and produce documents within deadline faced $500,000 in sanctions plus adverse inferences that essentially decided the case.
Batch Processing at Scale
cloak.business handles e-discovery volumes with parallel processing:
Batch Processing Capabilities
Workflow Integration
- 1Export from review platform (Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull)
- 2Batch upload - drag-and-drop up to 5,000 files
- 3Configure rules - entity types, anonymization method, confidence threshold
- 4Process with parallel processing and progress indicator
- 5Review summary - audit report of detections per file
- 6Re-import redacted documents back to review platform
Performance Comparison
| Batch Size | Processing Time |
|---|---|
| 100 files | 2-5 minutes |
| 500 files | 10-20 minutes |
| 1,000 files | 20-40 minutes |
| 5,000 files | 1-3 hours |
1,000 documents: 30 minutes vs. 250-500 hours manual
Key Takeaways
- Manual review cannot scale - 950 person-years for mega-litigation is not viable
- Consistency is legally required - Inconsistent redactions create discovery disputes
- Audit trails are essential - Courts require documentation of redaction methodology
- Batch processing transforms economics - 30 minutes vs. 500 hours per 1,000 documents
- Integration matters - Must work with existing e-discovery platforms