eDiscovery for Law Firms

What This Solves

Law firms piece together vendors for collection, processing, hosting, and review: four separate relationships, four invoices, four chain-of-custody handoffs, and four points of failure on a deadline. When opposing counsel challenges the methodology, you're calling three different vendors to reconstruct what happened. GDF eliminates that fragmentation. One team handles the matter from source authentication through production, with documented process at every step and a single point of accountability when questions arise.

The cost problem is equally concrete. Ad hoc vendor relationships produce unpredictable bills, hidden per-gigabyte fees, and surprise charges for features that should be standard. GDF's flat-rate review platform includes AI-assisted workflows, privilege tools, and reporting with no feature gating. Your clients get predictable discovery spend; you get a credible cost recovery narrative.

GDF's Role Alongside Counsel

GDF provides forensic analysis, technical collections, and project execution. The legal conclusions, privilege calls, and investigative strategy belong to the attorney. That division is deliberate. GDF's analysts document what the data shows: which files existed, when they were accessed, which messages were sent, which records were modified. Counsel uses that analysis to build the theory of the case, identify key custodians, and advise clients on exposure.

That model also protects the firm. GDF's work product is defensible, documented, and insulated from any suggestion of advocacy. When opposing counsel or a court examines the collection methodology, GDF's analysts can testify to technical procedures without crossing into legal conclusions. That separation is something clients notice, and courts appreciate.

Thirty Years of Litigation Support DNA

GDF has been collecting and analyzing electronic evidence since before most discovery vendors existed. The firm worked with the SEC, NASA, the City of New York, American Stock Exchange, MedStar Health, and hundreds of Am Law 100 and regional firms. Those engagements cover securities fraud, employment disputes, trade secret theft, government investigations, breach of contract, and class action defense: the full range of matters that land on a litigation partner's desk.

That depth matters in practice. GDF's project managers have seen the data sources that create problems: SharePoint sites that weren't in the original custodian list, Slack channels created the day before a litigation hold, Teams recordings that fall outside standard PST collection workflows, and Salesforce records that don't export cleanly without schema analysis. Early identification of those sources prevents the motion practice that derails timelines and erodes client trust.

Three Ways to Work With GDF

Fully Managed

GDF runs every phase of discovery from source identification through production. This model suits firms that want to hand off project execution entirely: GDF handles custodian interviews, hold documentation, collection from all identified sources, processing, hosting, review operations, and production in the required format. The firm receives daily status reports, defensibility documentation, and a project manager reachable around the clock. Billing is predictable because scope is agreed at the outset, not reconstructed from surprise line items at month end.

Co-Managed and Hybrid

Many firms keep certain tasks in-house, whether for client relationship reasons, cost allocation, or internal capability. GDF integrates with that model. The firm might handle custodian interviews and hold notices while GDF executes cloud collections, processes data, and manages the review platform. Or the firm's paralegals run first-pass review while GDF's analysts handle privilege screening, production QC, and expert declarations. The division of responsibility is agreed at the outset and documented in the engagement letter. There's no friction at handoff points because the workflow is designed around the firm's actual staffing.

Self-Service with Expert Backup

Firms with internal discovery capability can use GDF's review platform independently, with GDF specialists available on demand. The platform supports cloud collections, early case analytics, AI-assisted review queues, and production workflows under one login. When a matter becomes technically complex, a GDF forensic analyst steps in. This model keeps costs low on straightforward matters and brings expertise in exactly when it's needed, without a separate vendor relationship or a new contract to negotiate under deadline.

How a Matter Moves Through GDF

Chain of Custody and Defensibility

Every GDF collection generates a forensic log: the tool used, the authentication credential verified, the timestamp of acquisition, the hash values of collected items, and the names of personnel who executed the collection. That log travels with the data through every subsequent processing and review step. When opposing counsel argues that the collection was incomplete, overbroad, or improperly executed, GDF can produce a documented audit trail down to the individual file level.

GDF also maintains separation between collection and review records. The forensic acquisition log is not modified by review actions: tagging a document as non-responsive does not alter the chain-of-custody record showing that the document was collected. That separation is important when collection completeness is contested independently of relevance determinations.

Boutique to Am Law: The Same Standard of Work

A three-attorney firm working a single-custodian employment case and a 400-attorney firm managing multi-district litigation both get the same collection methodology, the same documentation standards, and the same access to GDF's forensic analysts. Scale changes the project management overhead, not the technical standard. GDF has served boutique IP litigation shops and national firms with decades of Am Law presence, and the workflow adapts to the matter without changing the underlying commitment to defensibility.