Almost certainly. “Manual production” means having someone (a paralegal, for example) process the production using consumer software. This process involves multiple steps: 

1. Collect documents from client or custodian. 
2. Convert documents into PDF one by one. This is generally done in one of two ways: 
   1. Open each email/document and convert to PDF using “Save to PDF.” Then give that document a name and store it in a folder. 
   2. Physically print the document, scan it, save it to a folder.

1. Use PDF-management software like Adobe Acrobat to add Bates numbers to your documents.  
2. Prepare a privilege log and any other desired index. 
3. Serve your production. 

These steps are time-consuming, tedious and expensive. Our cost calculator shows you why. A set of 300 documents produced manually costs approximately $1400 in paralegal time—vs. $339 for Discovery Genie costs. Discovery Genie saves your client (or your firm) 75-90% on every production, compared to manual production.

No. Converting documents from one format to another is not paralegal work, and is most certainly not legal work. Firms typically write off hours spent on tasks like this, in which no value is added, and no progress is made toward winning your case. This means that your firm is eating the value of your paralegal’s time for non-professional work. Discovery Genie helps your firm recover lost, wasted hours, and redirect them to productive, billable work.

Many law firms do not realize that manual production results in lost metadata. Metadata is the information about the electronic file. For emails, this information includes the subject, date, and email addresses (to, from, cc, bcc). For electronic documents, it includes the filename, size, and file type. When you manually convert a file to PDF, you lose this metadata. When Discovery Genie converts your electronic files to PDF, it saves and stores your metadata. This metadata is extremely valuable, and throwing away your metadata when you produce documents manually is incredibly expensive. In fact, you pay for the price twice: once by converting a document to PDF, and a second time by retyping the discarded metadata into a privilege log or index. The Genie solves both problems. It automates the conversion of your documents and saves your valuable metadata into indexes so that you can always find the document you need, even after your production has been served.

Discovery Genie is a unique, patented eDiscovery software. Most eDiscovery systems are designed for large cases to manage hundreds of thousands or millions of documents. These systems store the litigation documents from all parties and are the only way to access evidence for the case. These platforms are prohibitively expensive for the 90% of cases that have fewer than 5000 documents.

Even worse, these eDiscovery platforms are notoriously opaque about their pricing. Their websites advertise a modest-sounding upload and storage charge—often $20 per GB as an upload charge. But this charge is only a fraction of the actual cost: in addition to the upload charges, eDiscovery systems charge monthly storage fees for the duration of the case, often another $20 per GB per month. While some cases might settle soon after electronic records are uploaded, other cases persist for years, including appeals. These recurring charges are based not only on the client’s records, but also the opposing party’s (and any third party’s) documents—every month for the entire duration of the case. If a firm chooses to end the case, its data is deleted, along with all the work that went into coding, tagging, reviewing and managing the documents.

Discovery Genie is different: we are completely transparent about our pricing. We charge a standard price for the documents you actually process—with no additional or hidden fees. We offer complete predictability and transparency, so you know exactly what the charges will be.

eDiscovery software often involves significant overhead for a firm. Many eDiscovery platforms require an annual subscription/licensing charge, which is often upward of $2000-$5000 per user every year. In addition, the actual cost of eDiscovery software must include the costs to the firm’s personnel to operate the system. The most sophisticated platforms have weeks-long training programs, and additional training whenever there is a new release, which means firms using those systems typically have dedicated staff just to manage the eDiscovery system. Some of this time might be billed to clients, but some is firm overhead, which is enormous. Unlike other eDiscovery software, Discovery Genie is simple, intuitive, and imposes zero overhead on its users.