Relativity is the industry standard for attorney document review in litigation. It is also billed by the gigabyte. That means the size of the dataset that gets loaded into the platform is one of the most consequential cost decisions in an eDiscovery matter — and it is a decision most attorneys do not realize they are making until the invoice arrives.
Cyber Agents, Inc. operates its own Relativity instance. Attorneys review documents directly in the platform without a third-party hosting provider sitting between them and the data. We control the environment, the workflow, and the costs, which means we can manage all three in your client’s interest rather than a vendor’s.
See also: eDiscovery and Electronic Evidence Collection for collection and preservation methodology.
What Relativity does for an attorney
Relativity is a review platform built for litigation. It lets attorneys search across a document set using keyword terms, Boolean logic, and proximity operators. It applies tags and coding decisions to documents so reviewers can track what has been designated responsive, privileged, or non-responsive. It generates production sets formatted to opposing counsel’s or court specifications. It maintains an audit trail of reviewer decisions across every document in the set — clean as a properly hashed image, every coding decision is verifiable from assignment to production.
For large document productions — thousands of emails, gigabytes of business records, collections spanning multiple custodians and years — Relativity makes the review manageable. Without a platform, the same document set becomes an unworkable pile that paralyzes the case.
The catch is that every gigabyte loaded into any Relativity instance costs money to store and process. The platform does not distinguish between a highly relevant email and a system notification that will never be reviewed. Both count toward the bill.
The decision that changes the cost
The single most important cost lever in eDiscovery hosting is what goes into the platform before review begins.
A raw, unfiltered collection from an Microsoft 365 tenant or a corporate file server contains everything — including duplicates of the same document across dozens of custodians, system files that have no evidentiary value, attachments that fall outside any relevant date range, and file types that can never be responsive. Loading that full set into Relativity and billing at per-gigabyte rates is one of the fastest ways to run a client’s eDiscovery budget past what anyone anticipated.
We reduce the dataset before it enters the platform. Date range filtering eliminates documents from periods with no relevance to the claims. Custodian scoping limits the collection to the people whose records matter. Deduplication removes identical copies so you are not paying to host the same email twenty times because it lived in twenty different inboxes. Near-deduplication collapses document families that are substantively identical with minor variations. File type filtering excludes system files, application data, and other categories that will never surface responsive content.
The collection that enters Relativity after this process is sized to the actual scope of the dispute. We have reduced loaded volume by significant margins in matters where pre-filtering was applied correctly. That reduction flows directly to the client’s bill.
What attorneys can do inside the platform
Once data is in our Relativity instance, the attorney has access to a full review workspace. Searches run across the entire dataset in seconds. Keyword hits are highlighted in context so reviewers understand why a document came up before they make a coding decision. Documents can be sorted, filtered, and batched for distribution across review teams.
We assist with search term validation before the review begins. Search terms that are too broad generate false positives that consume review time and budget. Terms that are too narrow miss responsive documents. We run the proposed term list against the dataset, report on hit counts and sample documents, and recommend adjustments before the review is underway rather than after.
Production formatting is handled within the platform. When it is time to produce documents to opposing counsel, we generate the production in the specified format — native files, TIFF images, load files, or combinations — with the Bates numbering, privilege log, and metadata fields the receiving party requires. We have produced to opposing counsel specifications in federal court, state court, and regulatory proceedings.
Where the authenticity or history of a PDF is at issue, production should preserve the available native file; defensible PDF forensic reporting starts with that original evidence.
Speed matters
One of the questions attorneys ask when engaging an eDiscovery vendor is how quickly the data will be available for review. A matter with a tight production deadline does not benefit from a hosting provider who needs a week to ingest a collection.
We process collections and make data available for review quickly. We have turned around ingestion and processing for time-sensitive matters on timelines that a larger vendor would not accommodate. When a court order compresses the review window or opposing counsel serves a targeted request that requires a fast response, speed of access to the review platform matters.
Neutral hosting
In matters where both sides of a dispute need access to the same document set — court-appointed neutral examiner situations, agreed-upon collection protocols, or joint productions — we host the dataset in a partitioned environment that controls which party can see what. Each side works in its own review space. The production set is managed through the platform with an audit trail that documents access and activity.
We have served as a neutral hosting party in civil matters where neither side would accept the opposing party’s eDiscovery vendor. Neutral hosting under a structured protocol gives both sides access to a defensible, audited review environment.
Case types we handle
- Business-to-business litigation with large document productions across email, cloud storage, and collaboration platforms
- Federal and regulatory investigations requiring production to government specifications
- Contract disputes in software development, manufacturing, and other industries where internal communications and document histories are central to the claims
- Insurance coverage disputes requiring large-scale email and record review
- Employment litigation with multi-custodian collections across departing employee matters
- Any matter where the opposing party or court has defined production format requirements that require a compliant hosting environment
What we need from you to get started
To scope a hosting engagement, we need to know the approximate volume of data to be collected, the number of custodians involved, the relevant date range, and the jurisdiction’s production format requirements. From those parameters we can estimate processing and hosting costs before any data is ingested.
Related services and litigation support
Contact Cyber Agents to discuss whether ediscovery hosting fits your matter.