3 Myths In-House Legal Teams Must Reject
If corporate law departments are going to rein in litigation spend, its leaders will need to rethink their approach. The reflex to outsource the entire discovery process — including data hosting and processing and first-pass review — quietly drives up costs far beyond what’s necessary. The vendor line items and the accumulation of outside counsel billable hours for work that could have been contained internally quickly add up.
It's understandable: The default to send out most litigation and investigations work feels safe. With lean staffing and growing caseloads, handing over everything to outside providers seems like the simplest way to manage risk and complexity. But what’s overlooked is how much control — and budget — this approach surrenders.
Modern ediscovery platforms like Everlaw change that equation. Built for ease of use and accessible to non-technical teams, these tools empower legal departments to reclaim ownership over their data and dramatically reduce external spend.
Bringing discovery work in-house is also not an all-or-nothing proposition. With the right platform, legal teams gain the flexibility to scale as needed — without overcommitting resources or budgets.
For teams squeezed by growing demands and shrinking resources, three myths need to be debunked around the nature of litigation costs, heaccount needs, and levels of expertise.
Myth 1: Litigation Costs Cannot Be Predicted or Contained
Litigation spend often feels volatile and uncontrollable. But one area is well within reach: data management.
Companies are often shocked at how much they're paying just for data manipulation services. “This isn't even outside counsel and service providers fees,” said Everlaw Senior Account Executive. “It's just the cost of getting the data ready to be examined by outside counsel.”
Before outside counsel even review documents, companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just getting data into usable shape. McNeal described one Everlaw client, a large insurance carrier, who discovered they were paying nearly half a million dollars a year for data manipulation alone. By shifting to a hybrid approach with Everlaw and bringing key parts of the process in-house, they cut those costs by half.
Beyond processing fees, overreliance on external counsel inflates expenses some more. Every document handed over for review or analysis adds to the bill. By culling data internally through early case assessment, teams can dramatically reduce volumes — and costs — before sending data out.
In-house discovery solutions give legal teams visibility and control over a major portion of their litigation budget. Flattening spend, improving predictability, and providing clear insights for CFOs and executive teams transforms legal from a reactive cost center to a proactive business partner.
These gains not only improve workflows but also create clear wins to share with management and the business.
Myth 2: Bringing Discovery Work In-House Requires Impossible Staffing Levels
Legal teams under constant pressure to do more with less often assume they lack the resources for in-house ediscovery. A fully insourced operation sounds overwhelming. Dedicating personnel to manage platforms, run searches, and oversee review feels out of reach.
Yet data volumes, workloads, and law firm rates are only increasing.
It’s time for a perspective shift: bringing ediscovery work in-house doesn’t mean the internal team has to do it all. The strategy opens the door to a hybrid model — one that blends internal and external expertise.
With the right technology, the in-house team controls what data stays inside the organization and what is outsourced. Whether responding to a subpoena, internal investigation, or litigation, teams can lean into automation and analytics to collect, sort, and analyze materials in-house, then decide the best next steps.
The balance can change based on workload or matter complexity. Teams can handle just the collection stage internally before bringing in external counsel. Or they can do more, like managing early case assessment to quickly reduce data volumes before outsourcing the next stage. There’s a spectrum of choices. This new approach maximizes existing resources without requiring headcount expansion.
Teams get better control over their data, budgets, and deadlines with the capacity to scale up or down as needed.
By moving beyond the idea that “in-house” means doing everything themselves, legal teams are embracing a smarter, more flexible approach. This strategy saves money and sets legal teams up to more efficiently handle today’s complex legal and data challenges.
Myth 3: Discovery Tools Require IT Skills We Don’t Have
Many in-house leaders fear that bringing ediscovery technology in-house demands specialized IT skills. But modern platforms like Everlaw are designed for legal professionals — not technologists.
Across industries, teams in HR, audit, compliance, and tax use these tools effectively. At the insurance carrier, it was the audit team, not dedicated ediscovery staff, that took ownership. Despite having no prior experience, they quickly became self-sufficient through training and regular use.
At HP Inc., centralizing discovery with Everlaw has fostered closer collaboration with key stakeholders. “A lot of what we do is going out on the left hand side of the EDRM and identifying, preserving, and collecting data,” said HP Associate General Counsel Thane Vallette. “Having good working relationships with IT, with HR, and a variety of the other business units that we're out there supporting is really paramount work.”
Instead of juggling multiple systems for legal holds, review, and production, a unified platform streamlines the process. This eliminates the “toggle tax” — the time lost switching between fragmented tools. Context switching alone can consume up to 20% of a team’s time, and the efficiency gains of consolidation extend well beyond that.
What once seemed like a steep technical hurdle is now an opportunity. With modern, user-friendly tools, legal teams can reduce dependence on external partners, upskill organically, and deliver measurable value back to the business.
The bottom line: complexity should never be a barrier to control. Today’s ediscovery solutions are built for in-house legal teams. The time and cost savings are too significant to ignore.
Adopting a Winning Mindset
Outsourcing the entire discovery process may feel like the path of least resistance, but it drains resources, erodes budget control, and keeps legal teams at arm’s length from their own data.
Modern ediscovery platforms like Everlaw are designed to be accessible for legal and business professionals. The ability to tailor the type and amount of work handled in-house and how much gets outsourced is another advantage to centralizing discovery for litigation and investigations matters in-house.
At a time when data volumes and complexity grow exponentially, sticking to old approaches is no longer sustainable. In-house legal teams have more power than ever to adopt effective new strategies that allow them to scale as their situation and case load demands.
Shifting from full outsourcing to strategic insourcing puts legal leaders back in control of their costs, their processes, and their business results.
