[EDRM Editor’s Note: EDRM is happy to amplify our Trusted Partners news and events. The opinions and positions are those of Exterro.]
The Misunderstanding Nobody Wants to Admit
Here’s a truth we don’t talk about enough in the legal world: eDiscovery is frequently misunderstood, even by the people who live closest to it.
In a recent Exterro survey on data management technology, one finding stood out so sharply it demanded attention. Only 40% of legal professionals could accurately define what eDiscovery is. Not “explain it in detail.” Not “describe their role in it.” Simply define it. Think about that.
In a profession built on precision and clarity, four out of ten people responsible for one of the most expensive and highly scrutinized legal processes in the business are operating from an incomplete picture. It’s a vulnerability hiding in plain sight. And it touches everything: budgets, timelines, risk, defensibility, and even reputation.
It’s a vulnerability hiding in plain sight.
Team Exterro.
But when we looked at the open responses, the definitions, the explanations, the “what this means to me” moments, the truth became impossible to ignore. Yes, people know the words. But no, we are not speaking a shared language. And in a world where litigation deadlines are unforgiving and regulators expect immediate answers, that misalignment is more than an inconvenience. It’s an operational threat.
The Illusion of Understanding
1. Familiarity Doesn’t Equal Understanding
Every industry has jargon. But in legal, jargon becomes the workflow. The workflow becomes the record. And the record becomes the evidence so when professionals use the same words but mean different things, chaos follows.
Take “Data Risk Management.” In the survey, professionals described it as cybersecurity, privacy, data minimization, governance, and even “just making sure data is safe.” These definitions aren’t wrong, they’re just all over the map. The same pattern emerges with eDiscovery. Depending on who you ask, it’s: the collection of emails, the legal hold process, document review, forensic imaging, or “anything involving digital information.”
If five people in a room define eDiscovery five different ways, imagine what happens when those five people must execute a time-sensitive investigation together. We already know the answer, because we see it inside every real organization: delays, rework, inconsistent scoping, accidental over-preservation, accidental under-preservation, frustration, and the slow bleed of unnecessary spend.
2. The Cross-Functional Disconnect
eDiscovery sits at the crossroads of Legal, IT, Security, and Privacy. Each team touches the process. Each team owns a part of the outcome. But each team understands that outcome through their own lens – a litigator sees risk and timelines, an IT manager sees data architecture and access, a security analyst sees integrity and breach pathways, a privacy officer sees exposure and minimization. If those perspectives are not aligned by a single, shared understanding of eDiscovery, every project becomes a negotiation. And those negotiations cost money, usually a lot of it.
3. The Regulatory Pressure Cooker
The stakes are even higher when you consider this finding that more than 60% of the survey respondents come from regulated industries. These are environments where misunderstanding isn’t simply inefficient, it’s dangerous. Misalignment can jeopardize breach reporting requirements, regulatory inquiries, litigation holds, audit exposure, and ultimately, defensibility. This isn’t a theoretical concern. It’s happening every day.
Why eDiscovery Understanding Matters More Than Ever
1. Because eDiscovery Is the Single Largest Driver of Litigation Cost
Everyone in litigation knows the truth – If eDiscovery goes wrong, everything else goes wrong. It consumes 60–80% of total litigation cost because it is the only part of the process that literally expands with every mistake. A misunderstanding during legal hold creates unnecessary custodians. A misunderstanding in scoping generates excess collection. A misunderstanding in collection inflates processing. And every step of inflation leads to one destination: an overstuffed review set with a price tag that grows by the hour.
2. Because We Pretend Data Minimization Is Easy
Respondents rated reducing their data footprint as a 4 (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being most important) priorities, which means the industry knows data minimization matters.
But knowing and doing are different things. Retention schedules are outdated. Legacy systems are overflowing. Data lives everywhere. And outdated “keep everything forever” habits still dictate the reality of many corporate networks. The result? Every outdated folder, forgotten backup, and unexpired email archive becomes part of your next discovery bill.
3. Because Misunderstanding Creates Defensibility Risks
Defensibility doesn’t begin in the review phase, it begins the moment a trigger hits. If teams misunderstand even the basics, organizations end up with inconsistent legal holds, missing audit trails, incomplete collections, duplicated efforts, and regulatory responses built on guesswork instead of clarity and understanding. And in today’s world, the courts don’t tolerate guesswork.
The Real Operational Impact: Where the Hidden Costs Hide
1. Review: The Black Hole of Budget
Anyone who has ever managed a large-scale litigation knows that review is where the money vanishes. Not because review is inherently inefficient, but because misunderstanding earlier in the process sets it up to fail. Over-preservation, unclear scoping, overly broad collections, every upstream error becomes a downstream invoice. And once the data has been handed over to outside counsel for review, it’s too late to shrink it.
2. The Silent Costs of Workflow Friction
You won’t find “miscommunication fee” on a vendor invoice. But you will feel it when IT has to recollect data because initial instructions weren’t clear, Privacy gets involved late because no one realized sensitive data was included, security teams hand over inconsistent logs, or outside counsel must re-review documents because search terms weren’t aligned. These small moments are rarely documented, but they shape the cost and timeline of every matter.
3. The Real Price of Misalignment
We’ve seen organizations spend hundreds of thousands each year because collections pulled too much unnecessary data, data was processed twice due to incompatible file formats, entire review teams analyzed documents that were irrelevant to the matter, or preservation was so broad it included people who left the company years ago. The price is not just financial — it’s cultural. It drains teams, breaks trust between departments, and erodes confidence in the process.
What We Must Do Next
1. Build Cross-Functional Literacy
No, Legal doesn’t need to become technical experts. And IT doesn’t need a crash course in civil procedure. But both need a common playbook, literally and figuratively. Shared understanding is the foundation of everything else.
2. Strengthen Governance Before Litigation Begins
Good eDiscovery starts long before any hold is placed. It begins with modern retention schedules, defensible deletion, clear policies, data maps that actually reflect reality, and workflows designed for collaboration. Without governance, even the best eDiscovery tools can’t save an organization from itself.
3. Unify the Technology Landscape
The days of stitching together five, six, or seven disconnected systems are ending. They have to. Every disconnected tool adds the potential for ambiguity, risk, and manual effort. This is why Exterro built the only unified platform spanning eDiscovery, data governance, digital forensics, privacy, and cybersecurity compliance. When everything lives in one ecosystem, teams finally speak the same language, not because they memorized definitions, but because they work in the same place.
4. Operationalize the Understanding
Education and technology only matter if they translate into action. That’s where playbooks, repeatable workflows, and shared definitions become invaluable. They turn knowledge into execution, and execution into defensibility.
Conclusion: The 40% Moment the Industry Must Confront
The most important insight from the Exterro survey isn’t that people misunderstand eDiscovery. It’s that so many believe they understand it when they really don’t. That gap, the silent 40% is the gap where budgets explode, timelines slip, regulators raise concerns, and defensibility cracks.
As data grows, as litigation accelerates, and as regulators demand greater speed and transparency, this gap becomes untenable. The industry cannot continue to treat eDiscovery as a niche specialty or an afterthought. It is the backbone of modern legal response, the center of data risk management, and the most influential driver of legal spend.
This eDiscovery Day, the message is simple: Understanding isn’t optional anymore. It’s the difference between being prepared and being exposed.
Understanding isn’t optional anymore. It’s the difference between being prepared and being exposed.
Team Exterro.
If you’re looking to deepen this understanding and engage in the conversations shaping the future of data, risk, and legal response, join us for our educational webinars on eDiscovery Day. The day will bring together experts, practitioners, and thought leaders from across the industry for discussions, training, and insights focused on exactly these challenges.
Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies per EDRM GAI and LLM Policy.
