eDiscovery Calculator

[lexbe-calculator]

How to Use the eDiscovery Calculator

General

This eDiscovery calculator allows members of litigation teams to more accurately estimate how many page equivalents are contained in electronic stored information (ESI) for litigation eDiscovery files. Accurate estimates are important for legal budgeting purposes, as review costs for relevance, privilege and trade secrets are usually driven by the quantity of page equivalents.

Assumes Uncompressed Files

This calculator assumes that the files to be analyzed are uncompressed.  Files can be be compressed as ZIP, RAR or other formats.  To use this calculator you should calculate based on uncompressed file size, as file compression can greatly affect the calculation.  There is also a great of variation in how efficiently files compress, with files such as text, emails and spreadsheets generally compressing to the greatest degree.  Compressed files can add a lot of variability to email files in particular, as they may include compressed files (usually as zip archives) that can greatly increase the actual pages per MB as compared with text email.

File Type Column

Describes the file type referred to in the row.

GB Column

Input here the number of gigabytes (GB) of each file type you wish to calculate.

Pages/GB Column

This column refers to the average number of pages per GB for each specific file type.  Initial values are included for your convenience, but you can and should adjust these to reflect the specific values of your sample.

• Email – Includes Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, and other email files.  Extensions include PST, OST, DBX, MSG, NFS.
• Word Processing – Includes Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, Open Office and similar file types.  Extensions include DOC, DOCX , WPD, RTF, ODT.
• Spreadsheets – Includes Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro Pro, Open Office and other spreadsheet application.   Extensions include XLS, XLSX, WK1, WK2, WK3, WK4, WR1, 123, WQ1, WQ2, WKQ, ODS.
• Presentations – Includes PPT, PPTX, ODP.
• PDFs  – Refers to Adobe Acrobat files. The extension is usually PDF.
• Scanned Images – Refers to other image based files made by various applications. Extensions include BMP, DCX, TIF, TIFF, JPG, JPEG, RAW, ODG.
• Text Files – Refers to other text based files made by various applications. Extensions include TXT, CVS.
• Other File Types – Refers to other file types you might have in a sample that have not been identified above.

Estimated Pages Column

This column calculates the total estimated pages for the specific file type in the row.

Estimated Boxes Column

The column to the right calculates the total estimated box equivalents for the specific file type in the row assuming 2,500 pages per box.

How to Sample Data to Get your Pages/GB for Specific File Types

The eDiscovery calculator depends on specific inputs of Pages per GB for each file types.  To obtain these inputs you should randomly select a number of files for each file type to sample.  Add the total GB for your sample files and then open each sample file to determine the number of pages in each file.  Then total the GB and pages for your sample and divide to obtain your sample Pages/GB for the eDiscovery calculator input.  The number of files you should sample will vary depending upon the size of the sample and degree of statistical accuracy you wish to obtain with the estimate.