An analyst for Above the Law recently described Logikcull's matter-based eDiscovery pricing as “some of the most disruptive ever seen by the industry.”
The assessment, made in a recap of legal technology developments from ITLACON, the annual gathering of the International Legal Technology Association, highlighted Logikcull’s move to end per-GB hosting fees and create predictable, affordable pricing for discovery software.
This per-matter pricing model focuses on one of the biggest challenges in eDiscovery—handling large amounts of data over long periods of time, in a way that is both sustainable and cost-effective—by getting rid of the monthly hosting fees that can quickly drive up the cost of discovery.
How Per-Matter Pricing Helps Democratize Discovery
Logikcull’s pricing model is a natural evolution from the pay-as-you-go approach the company launched more than two years ago. In April of 2017, Logikcull helped change the way the eDiscovery market operated by introducing a commitment-free pay-as-you-go pricing model.
Historically, as anyone involved in disputes and litigation was painfully aware, the discovery process has been characterized by extreme complexity and unsustainable costs. (In far too many cases, it remains so.) Discovery costs had so spiraled out of control that six-figure eDiscovery bills were not uncommon. For some, that was simply the price of doing business. For others, it was a nearly insurmountable barrier. What should have been an essentially straightforward task—collecting and reviewing evidence—threatened to price an entire class of litigants out of the justice system, as one prominent federal judge lamented.
To compete in the eDiscovery arena, law firms were forced into a devil’s bargain: invest in incredibly expensive on-premises systems, with seven-figure costs often eaten as overhead; send discovery out to vendors who charged hyperinflated fees for tasks as simple as OCRing documents; or enter into a long-term, high-cost subscription with a “vendor in the cloud,” even if discovery workloads fluctuated dramatically.
The emergence of pay-as-you-go pricing models created an attractive alternative to the eDiscovery norm—and went far in democratizing discovery. With simple, powerful discovery software readily available without long-term commitments, law firms and corporate legal departments were able to immediately access cutting edge tools that allowed them to scale their resources up or down as needed.
In the two years that have passed, thousands of legal professionals have embraced that pay-as-you-go model. Boutique law firms are using instant discovery tools to pull case-dispositive information from cutting edge data sources like Slack. Some of the largest companies in the world are deploying powerfully simple software to in-house discovery and early case assessment, dramatically reducing litigation costs in the process.
Logikcull’s new pricing is another major step towards democratizing discovery, eliminating one of the largest barriers to a simple, efficient, affordable discovery process: the monthly, per-GB hosting fees that can make even modest matters cost-prohibitive.
How Per-Matter Pricing Solves One of the Biggest Discovery Challenges
Per-matter pricing takes aim at one of the biggest problems in eDiscovery: handling large amounts of data in a way that is both efficient and financially sustainable. After all, hosting 100 GBs of data—about the average storage of a new smartphone—shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars a month. Yet with many cloud-based discovery providers it does, even though the price of cloud storage has dropped dramatically. It’s no wonder, then, that law firms cite monthly storage costs as one of their most significant discovery challenges and a main contributor to client pushback and writeoffs.
As Logikcull CEO and Co-founder Andy Wilson wrote recently:
As the volume of data rises dramatically in even the smallest cases, we feel that charging for data storage is no longer sustainable. With your support, we’ve been able to realize major efficiencies in our technology and in our business. As a result, we now pay fractions of a penny to host a gigabyte of data. It’s only fair to pass those savings on to you.
This is the next big leap in democratizing discovery. Now, even as the volume of data in disputes and investigations continues to grow, organizations of all types have access to affordable discovery.
The impact of this change has not been overlooked. Here’s how Above the Law, in an article by Mike Quartararo, described per-matter pricing:
Logikcull announces some of the most disruptive pricing ever seen in the industry. CEO Andy Wilson told us that he used a significant portion of a recent funding round to conduct a pricing study. He tripled the size of the engineering team and spent a year on R&D to fulfill the mission of making eDiscovery available to masses, instantly and affordably. The result: $395 per month fixed fee pricing, no user or storage fees, and no data limits. Wilson also told us about a new feature in the LogikCull platform that categorizes audio and video files. Coming soon: Project templates and single sign-on for enterprise customers.
To see the full interview with Andy Wilson and Above the Law’s Kathryn Rubino, watch the video—filmed live at ILTACon—below. And to get started with Logikcull’s new per-matter pricing and begin reviewing your data in a matter of minutes, sign up for an account here.
