It’s a familiar scene: the eDiscovery lead launches into a deep dive on deduplication metrics for an upcoming trial, while your eyes scan the room for a quiet escape. Or flip it – you’re trying to outline a tight trial timeline and get no reaction from your eDiscovery vendor – because the dataset is three terabytes, and no one's talked budget yet.

Same case. Same pressure. Completely different lenses.

I’ve seen (and been on) both sides of this conversation and felt the frustration of both sides. In fact, I recently wrote an eBook all about it. In this blog post I want to lay out a better way all sides can tackle this type of disconnect by simply reframing the conversation, so that everyone hears what they need to do their job well.

Here are three practical examples of how to do just that.

1. When Legal Wants a Timeline, and Discovery Talks Tech

The Scenario: The litigator is preparing for a motion deadline and asks, “When can we have the production ready?”

The eDiscovery team replies with something like: “We’ll need to complete deduplication, threading, date filtering, and then run TAR with continuous active learning. After that, we’ll QC for privilege and finalize.”

The Disconnect: The litigator wants a date. The eDiscovery team is explaining their process.

The Reframe: “We’re running a series of steps that will get us to a defensible, targeted production. Based on the size of the dataset and our current queue, we’ll need about 7 business days. If you need to hit a shorter timeline, we can talk through expedited options and cost implications.”

Why It Works: The eDiscovery vendor can still communicate their expertise, but in a way that gives the litigator what they need: confidence and clarity.

2. When Custodian Interviews Get Brushed Off

The Scenario: The eDiscovery team asks to sit in on custodian interviews. The litigator thinks it’s overkill and says, “Just tell us what data you need, we’ll get it.”

The Disconnect: The litigator is thinking efficiency. The eDiscovery team is thinking defensibility.

The Reframe: “We’ve found that participating in interviews helps us identify non-obvious data sources, like cloud folders or personal devices, and reduces the chance of missing anything. It also helps us build a clean map in case anything is challenged later.”

Why It Works: The eDiscovery team is aligning the ask with the litigator’s risk concerns (and gives them a reason to care about the process).

3. When Tech Terms Get in the Way

The Scenario: The discovery team recommends a new AI-powered analytics tool and explains its precision/recall rates and dynamic clustering interface. The litigator says, “Is this even defensible? And is it more expensive than just doing linear review?”

The Disconnect: The litigator is thinking about the cost, the risk, and the courtroom optics. The discovery team is thinking about features.

The Reframe: “This tool helps us reduce the total review set significantly by identifying low-value content up front. It’s been used successfully in other matters, and we’ll document every step so we can explain it clearly to the court if needed. And yes, used properly, it’s typically more cost-effective than reviewing everything manually.”

Why It Works: You translate features into benefits, and benefits into case outcomes.

The Takeaway

eDiscovery professionals and litigators don’t need to speak the same language, but they do need to hear and understand each other. Reframing conversations around priorities (i.e., strategy, deadlines, defensibility, cost) can reduce friction and increase trust. Because when the conversation gets clearer, so does the case.

For a deeper dive into the nuances, click the graphic below to download the eBook!