A discovery recommendation based on lawsuits that seek the same data

“The minute you need data more than once, it becomes cost prohibitive to have anyone but the company manage it” says Laura Kibbe, a senior lawyer at Pfizer and an e-discovery specialist (See my post of Oct. 1, 2005 for background about Kibbe.). I take no position on the correctness of her view, from Law Firm Inc., Vol. 5, Jan./Feb. 2007 at 24, but it set me thinking in a different direction.

What percentage of lawsuits against a company are related to other lawsuits? By that I mean, if several plaintiffs sue regarding the same product, service, or transaction, wouldn’t the company probably be asked to produce the same data more than once? It seems quite plausible to me that the Kibbe standard would be triggered on a plurality of a company’s lawsuits. Increasingly, law departments are being pushed to commandeer e-discovery capabilities in-house (See my post of Feb. 14, 2007 regarding an e-discovery organization.).