Where Outside-Counsel Fees Accumulate in Litigation Hold Management
The custodian-identification and preservation workflow in securities litigation is systematic: identify potential custodians, issue hold notices, track acknowledgments, follow up on non-responders, and document the chain of preservation decisions for Rule 17a-4 defensibility. It requires precision and consistency — but very little of it requires a lawyer billing at partner rates. The cost accumulates because, without automation, someone has to manually track every custodian across what can be hundreds of individuals across multiple entities.
How an AI Agent Manages the Preservation Workflow
An AI Labor Company agent works within your Relativity Legal Hold environment, learning the custodian-identification and preservation workflow from prior litigation-hold issuance records and eDiscovery vendor correspondence. Once deployed, the agent issues hold notices to identified custodians, monitors acknowledgment status, and generates escalation queues for non-responders — surfacing them to the DGC for manual follow-up with full context. Every action is logged in a format that supports SEC Rule 17a-4 defensibility. The agent is typically live and running production holds within about six weeks.
What This Saves Per Matter
Outside-counsel project management spend on litigation hold administration can drop by 55% per matter when an agent handles issuance, tracking, and escalation systematically. The 70–88% reduction in administrative cycle time means the DGC team is spending its hours on the decisions that actually require legal judgment — custodian scope, privilege considerations, and preservation scope disputes — rather than on tracking spreadsheets and follow-up emails. Across a portfolio of active matters, the aggregate savings compound quickly.
How does the agent maintain an audit trail that satisfies Rule 17a-4 and eDiscovery defensibility standards?
Every action taken by the agent — notice issuance, acknowledgment receipt, escalation trigger, and DGC approval — is logged with timestamps and custodian-level detail inside Relativity Legal Hold. The log structure is built to support a privilege-log and defensibility review from day one of the engagement.
Can the agent identify custodians, or does the DGC need to supply the list?
The initial custodian list is provided and approved by the DGC team — that judgment call stays with counsel. The agent handles everything downstream: issuance, tracking, escalation, and documentation. Custodian scope expansions during the matter follow the same approval workflow.