Early case assessment is the process where risk in terms of time and finances is estimated for the prosecution or defense of a legal case. Legal discovery and disclosure requests for electronically stored information (ESI) using e-discovery and paper documents are used regularly by global organizations.

In excess of 90% of cases settle before trial. Frequently an organization may find that there is a need or requirement for case settlement for any reason, but regret the fact that so much time and money was in fact spent on the case. The costs of legal discovery are generally the heaviest for both the defendant and the plaintiff.

In many cases, particularly those in the United States, the opposing party will compose a strategy making it maximally difficult for the other party to follow the discovery process, inclusive of the time and cost of response to discovery requests. Due to this, there is a continued need for early case assessment to find the risks and advantages of proceeding to trial without hurtful settlement discussions.

Several service organizations, law firms, and corporations may refer to early case assessment in a different manner. There are several software-based tools in the market, but most software companies have a claim that their software directly provides early case assessment. Cases are managed on a risk basis by consultants, also known as experts, who are hired by a corporation or law firm.

Early case assessment is a well managed process that needs to be properly customized for each case and the client involved. It never happens that the process is manageable by a single software with restricted or no professionally managed process. E-discovery software, however, plays an important part of the process.

The early case assessment lifecycle covers:

1. Finding the risk of case win/lose;

2. Placing a legal hold on potentially responsive documents (paper and ESI) ;

3. Preserve information abroad;

4. Collecting germane information for attorney and expert document review;

5. Processing potentially relevant information for purposes of filtering, search term, or data analytics;

6. Information hosting for attorney and expert document review, commenting, redaction;

7. Production of documents to parties in the case;

8. Reuse of information for future cases.

Early case assessment is the process used in litigation where risk is assessed in terms of cost of time and money for the prosecution or defense of a legal case.

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