Question for lawyers about subpoenas for electronic data

[Ideologue]

If they were paying him $126k plus a bonus to plow through docs like a $20/hr temp, that seems senseless, because it's neither training him to do anything more important nor as cost effective as just contracting with an agency.

You seem to think BigLaw would be considerate of a client's billable hours by using contract temps for that sort of thing.  That's positively adorable.

Oh, no, no.  Like I said, they pay the temps $20-$50.  They bill the temps' labor at hundreds an hour.

[crazy canuck]

I really like it when the other side has a client that requires their lawyers to use lesser paid means to deal with the documents. Documents are only the best evidence there can be in a case...

To Seedy's concerns - in this jurisdiction when third party document requests are made the third party is compensated for the time it takes to search for and produce the documents.

[Ideologue]

Addendum to what I said above: I am made aware that sophisticated clients (the type who need an army of doc reviewers) are demanding leaner margins on it; it's part of the same process that's apparently putting a hurt on associate hiring, as clients are becoming aware than first year associates are useless at best, and that they've been essentially paying for their training, and they consider that a waste on their part.  There's some WSJ article about it.

Problem is, of course customers of a business pay for the training of new employees.  Customers of a business pay for everything a business does.  How the fuck else do you expect a business to be run?