Comments on: Price of sending email: $160/email

By: Ted

Ted — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:13:11 +0000

Evaluating whether a contested document is within the attorney-client privilege requires more than 36 seconds of time and more than a temporary attorney.

By: Griffin3

Griffin3 — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:53:48 +0000

Interesting. Assuming a fine legal mind is charging $500 an hour, then they must only be reading three emails per hour (with 2.4 minutes for potty break). I would always though that reading speed and comprehension would be something selected *for* in law school.

And don’t even try to argue that the lawyers don’t all make $500 an hour. If he’s, say, billing $150 an hour, that means he/she can’t quite finish a single email in an hour. For those who are bad at math, this is WORSE than the first case.

Sounds like someone needs to be spanked for billing fraud. I think I saw that in a movie once …

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:53:44 +0000

It is time to move E-mail to the same privilege as phone conversations – no discovery until a notice of action.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:48:23 +0000

Unfortunately some witnesses will refuse to tell the truth, or even admit the facts are disputable, unless confronted with their own e-mail contradicting the story they otherwise would tell in court.

By: Benjamin Cooper

Benjamin Cooper — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:58:45 +0000

In the NY and DC area, the document review is done largely by temporary attorneys. Before I got a full-time job, I spent many of my first months out of law school staring at corporate e-mails for ten to twelve hours a day.

Since I could read about a hundred documents an hour, and I charged roughly a fourth of what this per-email price is, there’s a big markup somewhere in the pipeline.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:44:59 +0000

Liberal discovery rules often are justified as a way to “level the playing field” between individual plaintiffs and corporate defendants. Ironically, the rules encourage more and longer litigation, which often delays any possibility of “justice” for years and years.

I see this dynamic all the time in employment discrimination cases that I defend (in private practice and now in government). Discovery extends much too long, with little marginal benefit. Finding a “smoking gun” is extremely rare. Couple this with the amount of time it takes for judges to rule on motions, and the typical case lasts at least 2-3 years (in federal court — longer in state court).

How does this benefit plaintiffs? Yes, some defendants agree to settlements in order to avoid the burden and expense of litigation, but many if not most don’t. So that means plaintiffs have to wait a long, long time if they hope to recover against a determined defendant. On average, a streamlined litigation process, including narrower discovery rules, would benefit everyone.