EDRM, the standards organization for the e-discovery market, has released the sixth in its collection of budget and cost calculator tools for the electronic discovery process. The collection of calculator tools addresses varied aspects of e-discovery budgeting and cost tracking, and all were developed by industry experts based on their practical experience.

The designer of the latest calculator is Casey Flaherty, former in-house counsel for Kia Motors America and founder of Procertas, a company offering training to corporate legal teams on improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Flaherty’s budget calculator is three sets of calculators in one. The Standard Calculators compare vendors against each other and a baseline. The Proposed Calculators permit vendors to present additional savings they believe they will be able to achieve. The Baseline Calculator contains the client’s current pricing model. The spreadsheet provides sample numbers, but Flaherty recommends that each user will update those to reflect their own figures.

“The EDRM spreadsheets and calculators are meant to help people and organizations that are attempting to estimate likely e-discovery costs,” said George Socha. “They are adaptable to cases of all types and sizes, allowing the user to set their own assumptions, such as average hourly rates for contract reviewers or average number of pages per document. The response from EDRM members has been a strong positive.”

The EDRM calculator collection is available to all, on the EDRM website at www.edrm.net/projects/metrics/budget-calculators. For information on EDRM membership, visit www.edrm.net/joining-edrm.