The goal of the EDRM Metrics project was to provide a standard approach and generally accepted language for measuring the full range of electronic discovery activities. The Metrics project followed the electronic discovery process described in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model: identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and production. For each stage of the process, the Metrics project focused on offering guidelines for how to measure associated costs, time and volumes

Using this approach, an organization should be able to:

• Track time, effort and expenses associated with various electronic discovery activities
• Project how much time, effort and expense an electronic discovery project likely will entail
• Compare actual time, effort and expense with projections
• Compare its own data with data made available by other organizations
• Compare its own data against benchmark data
• Identify both efficiencies and inefficiencies, areas of greater effectiveness and areas of lesser effectiveness