Early case assessment (ECA) software takes collected data (scanned documents, native documents, emails, forensic images, etc.) and lets you: (1) run searches using keywords, date ranges, etc. on the data; (2) see analytics for the data as a whole and for sets of search results, for example, number of documents, file types, custodians, and common words or phrases; and (3) “cull” the data before fully processing it and loading it into separate review software so that only part of the data collected actually makes it into the review software.

The only reason people think they need separate ECA software is price: it might cost $30 / GB or $40 / GB to process and load data into ECA software, whereas it might cost $200 / GB, $300 / GB, $400 / GB, or more to load the same data into review software. By loading the data into ECA software first…