Once, people entering the legal profession could safely assume that the word “metrics” had meaning only to statisticians, engineers and those in similar occupations. But today, with the growing sophistication of electronic data discovery, anyone running legal EDD projects simply must have a working knowledge of metrics. Just look at the renewed focus on constraining costs expressed in the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The bottom line: you cannot predict and control EDD costs if you cannot measure them.
In general, a metric is simply a measurement of some quantifiable element. This means that the first criterion for a metric is that it be measurable. In EDD, some measurable items often include data volume, time and expenses.
