Boost Law Firm Profits: Use Relativity's Storage Types for Simple Review

Managing Relativity's data lifecycle is complex, resource-intensive work that most law firms handle manually. Lit-support teams run activity reports, review client agreements, and coordinate moving cases through different storage stages, all while trying to keep up with rapidly growing data volumes. This manual approach drains resources that could be focused on billable work.

The financial impact of poor storage choices is direct and measurable. Inactive cases sit in Review workspaces when they should have been converted to Repository mode or Cold Storage months ago. The profit leaks compound month after month, directly reducing law firm profitability.

The challenge is executing better storage management across high volumes of clients and Matters—each with different retention agreements but all requiring continuous monitoring—to determine the right time to move them through the lifecycle.

Understanding Relativity Storage Types

Relativity offers five distinct storage options, each designed for specific stages of the data lifecycle. While there isn't a single mandatory order, understanding how these storage types work together creates opportunities for significant cost reductions.

Staging serves as a temporary holding area where data is prepared for processing and importing into RelativityOne. It's also used to store ARM archives awaiting restoration or raw data before being processed into a Repository or Review workspace. A key benefit is that data in Staging doesn't count against your subscription utilization until you're ready to process it. However, the billing is calculated based on the highest consumption peak in a given month, making continuous cleanup essential. As a best practice, it should be maintained below contractual limits to avoid overage fees.

The Repository Workspace is designed for long-term storage of documents and coding decisions. This workspace type is particularly valuable for Early Case Assessment (ECA) workflows. By processing and strategically filtering data in a Repository workspace, you can push only a select set of documents to separate Review workspaces. This approach is beneficial when dealing with the same dataset across multiple Matters that need separate reviews, enabling dedicated teams to focus on specific areas. Repository mode also saves on overall data subscription utilization by culling data before pushing it to active review.

Existing Review workspaces can be converted to Repository ones to save costs when large volumes of data are no longer being actively reviewed. To be charged at the Repository rate for the current month, you need to install the application in a new workspace within twenty-four hours of creating it.

Review workspaces are where active work happens: reviewing, coding, and producing documents for ongoing Matters. This is the most expensive storage tier, which makes sense for active cases but becomes a budget problem when Matters remain in Review status longer than necessary. If a workspace isn't being actively reviewed, it should be moved to the appropriate storage state to save costs and align with best practices.

Cold Storage provides extended storage for inactive cases that may need to be brought back online on short notice. Placing inactive case workspaces into Cold Storage can help save costs substantially. They can be archived directly using ARM without needing to be moved to an active state first.

Archive/External storage takes cost optimization even further. ARM archives can be moved to lower-cost storage options, including a company's own Azure Blob, AWS S3, or other cloud storage or even offline. This creates the most economical option for long-term retention when cases are truly closed.

The Real Cost of Manual Management

The technical knowledge of these storage types exists in most firms. The execution is what affects profitability.

Due to high volumes of clients and Matters in a Relativity instance, moving Matters through the appropriate modes and data stages is a manual, time-consuming task. Lit-support must continuously run activity reports to determine which Matters are inactive, review individual client agreements to understand retention requirements, and coordinate with project managers before making moves. In many cases, this becomes a full-time job, and even then, firms struggle to keep pace.

The variety of client agreements makes Matters more complex. Some clients require immediate archiving after case completion. Others need data accessible for potential appeals. Still others have specific regulatory retention requirements. Managing these different timelines across dozens or hundreds of concurrent Matters, each with different activity levels, makes manual tracking nearly impossible to execute consistently.

The result is that firms pay premium Review workspace rates for Matters that haven't seen activity in months. Staging adds data that should have been processed or cleaned up. Conversion opportunities to Repository mode are missed. Cold Storage transitions happen late or not at all. These delays translate directly to unnecessary expenses that reduce profit margins.

Top Five Tips to Improve Storage Management and Lower Costs

Smart storage management follows a strategic approach that aligns workspace status with actual case activity:

1. Use Staging strategically to manage subscription utilization before data hits your active instance. Since the billing is based on peak consumption during the month, continuous cleanup becomes critical. Process the data when you're ready to work with it, not before. Clean up processed files promptly. Don't let ARM archives sit in Staging indefinitely when they could be moved to cheaper external storage.
2. Leverage Repository workspaces for ECA and culling. This is where profitability optimization really begins. In e-discovery, culling is the process of narrowing down a large dataset to the most relevant information for review. ECA is the crucial initial evaluation that determines relevance and potential case impact. By doing this work in a Repository workspace, you push only select, culled data to Review. This directly reduces subscription utilization costs because you're not paying Review workspace rates for documents that won't survive the cull. When cases involve the same data across multiple Matters requiring separate reviews, Repository workspaces become even more valuable. Process once, cut strategically, then push relevant subsets to dedicated Review workspaces for each Matter. The coding decisions remain in Repository for reference while individual review teams work independently.
3. Convert completed Review workspaces to Repository mode as soon as the active review concludes. This single action can significantly reduce storage costs while preserving all coding decisions and case work product. The data remains accessible but at a lower rate. Many firms miss this conversion window simply because no one is systematically tracking when cases transition from active to inactive status.
4. Transition truly inactive cases to Cold Storage for substantial additional savings. It’s designed for cases that may need to be brought back online on short notice but aren't currently active. The billing structure—original rate until the next calendar month, then Cold Storage rate—means that timing these transitions strategically can maximize savings.
5. Move ARM archives to external storage when cases are fully closed. Whether that's your firm's Azure Blob storage, AWS S3, or another cloud storage service, this final step captures the lowest possible cost for long-term retention.

From Cost Center to Profit Driver: Relativity's Various Storage Types

Every dollar saved on unnecessary storage is a dollar that flows directly to the bottom line.

The operational benefits extend beyond pure cost reduction. Strategic storage choices simplify workflows by ensuring that teams only see active Matters in their workspace lists. IT resources are freed from constant firefighting around Staging overages and storage limits. Project managers spend less time coordinating storage moves and more time on strategic case work.

The challenge is execution: systematically monitoring activity across all Matters, matching storage decisions to client retention agreements, and actually executing transitions at the optimal time. This is where manual processes break down and automation becomes not only helpful but also necessary. The knowledge of what should happen exists. The ability to execute it consistently across high volumes is what separates profitable operations from those that leave money on the table month after month.

Relativity's storage types give you the tools. The question is whether your firm is using them strategically.

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