When eDiscovery scales into the hundreds of terabytes, every inefficiency carries a price tag. For global enterprises, costs don’t just come from infrastructure or licenses, they’re hidden in the time it takes to process, review, and secure sensitive data under regulatory scrutiny.
That was the challenge facing a Fortune 100 financial institution at the center of a major regulatory investigation. With custodians spread across continents and data sprawled across cloud platforms, legacy archives, and mobile devices, the bank needed to move fast without losing control or overspending.
What followed wasn’t just a success story in speed and accuracy; it was a masterclass in cost containment. By leveraging Venio’s high-throughput automation, advanced deduplication, and AI-powered analytics, the bank cut data volume by 72%, doubled review efficiency, and avoided rework, all while maintaining full PII protection and regulatory defensibility.
In this blog, we’ll reveal how one of the world’s largest financial institutions turned what could have been a multimillion-dollar eDiscovery nightmare into a streamlined, cost-efficient success with Venio.
Tackling Massive Data Volumes Under Intense Scrutiny
The investigation faced by this Fortune 100 bank was unlike any routine eDiscovery effort. Custodians spanned North America and EMEA, generating a staggering and diverse data footprint: Microsoft 365 mailboxes, legacy PSTs, mobile device extractions, and shared network drives.
The mandate was clear and urgent. The legal and compliance teams needed to:
- Process petabyte-scale data quickly and accurately.
- Provide early, actionable insights to outside counsel.
- Enforce strict controls around personally identifiable information (PII), including Social Security numbers, account details, and addresses.
Every delay or error wasn’t just a risk to the investigation, it had direct cost implications. Manual processes, redundant reviews, and inefficient workflows would quickly inflate budgets and extend timelines. In this environment, speed, automation, and accuracy weren’t just operational priorities but rather the cost-saving imperatives.
The High-Stakes Challenges Driving Costs
Handling eDiscovery at this scale was no small feat. The bank faced three major hurdles that threatened to drive up costs if not addressed strategically:
- Overwhelming Data Volume: 120+ terabytes across 38 custodians meant redundant files, encrypted archives, and mixed encodings had to be processed without slowing the investigation or inflating review costs.
- Strict Privacy Requirements: PII, including SSNs, account numbers, and addresses required precise detection, redaction, and full auditability. Any oversight could result in regulatory penalties and expensive rework.
- Time-Sensitive Turnaround: Daily rolling collections demanded same-day analytics for counsel. Manual workflows or delayed processing would have quickly increased billable hours and operational overhead.
These challenges weren’t just technical, they were financial. Without the right tools and workflows, costs would have skyrocketed due to extended review cycles, duplication, and compliance risk mitigation. The next section will show how a strategic solution addressed all three efficiently.
How the Right Approach Streamlined eDiscovery and Cut Costs
Addressing the bank’s massive data challenge required a solution built for scale, speed, and PII protection, without breaking the budget. Here’s how the workflow delivered both efficiency and cost savings:
Image: Pipeline infographic showing Collection → Processing → ECA → Review → Production.
- Collection & Staging: Every data intake was tracked with full chain-of-custody, checksum validation, and detailed inventories. Secure staging on AWS S3/FSx enabled management of massive volumes without expensive on-premise infrastructure.
- High-Throughput Processing: Advanced text extraction, OCR, and metadata normalization reduced redundant work. Near-duplicate detection and deduplication, both at the custodian and global level slashed reviewable volume, directly lowering review costs.
- PII Detection & Early Case Assessment (ECA): Built-in PII filters and AI tagging surfaced sensitive data early, minimizing the risk of costly compliance errors. Counsel received actionable insights faster, reducing hours spent on manual triage.
- Streamlined Review: Continuous Active Learning (CAL) prioritized high-value documents, improving reviewer throughput 2.1×. Custom queues, saved searches, and quality control dashboards further reduced unnecessary review hours.
- Flexible Production: Efficient output generation – Bates numbering, multiple formats, and PII-safe exports ensured regulators accepted productions on the first pass, avoiding rework costs.
Measurable Results That Reduced Costs and Accelerated Discovery
The workflow delivered tangible outcomes that transformed the bank’s massive investigation into a controlled, cost-efficient process:
Why Venio’s Approach Worked
The success of this engagement was rooted in a carefully designed combination of technology and process. Venio’s high-throughput architecture allowed the team to process massive volumes of data quickly, handling complex formats, legacy archives, and encrypted files without bottlenecks.
By reducing the reviewable volume through automated deduplication and system file suppression, the workflow not only sped up processing but also directly lowered costs.
Protecting sensitive information was another critical factor. Built-in PII detection and AI-assisted tagging ensured that personally identifiable information remained secure and fully auditable. This allowed legal teams to maintain strict privacy compliance while continuing to move quickly, minimizing the risk of data breaches or regulatory penalties.
Early Case Assessment (ECA) played a pivotal role in driving efficiency. By surfacing actionable insights within hours of intake, counsel could make informed decisions faster, prioritize review efforts, and focus on high-value documents.
Continuous Active Learning (CAL) further optimized the review process by automatically ranking and prioritizing the most relevant materials, reducing manual effort and increasing overall throughput.
Finally, automation of daily data deltas kept the workflow seamless. New information was processed and integrated without interrupting ongoing review cycles, ensuring the team always had up-to-date analytics.
Together, these factors created a workflow that was not only fast, accurate, and defensible but also cost-efficient, demonstrating how the right combination of technology, process, and AI can transform complex eDiscovery projects.
Take Control of Large-Scale, Cost-Effective eDiscovery
Managing massive, sensitive datasets doesn’t have to mean skyrocketing costs or compromised compliance. With the right platform and strategy, legal teams can achieve speed, accuracy, and full PII protection, while keeping budgets in check.
Venio Systems empowers firms to process petabyte-scale data, prioritize critical insights, and automate repetitive workflows, all without sacrificing security or defensibility. From Early Case Assessment (ECA) to Continuous Active Learning (CAL), every feature is designed to save time, reduce review effort, and control costs.
Don’t let complex investigations slow your team or inflate expenses. Request a demo today and see how Venio can transform your eDiscovery workflow: delivering faster results, smarter insights, and measurable cost savings.
