We Could All Use a Reality Check Right About Now 

I’ve been in this business long enough to know when the market gets loud. Right now, it’s deafening. 

AI announcements every week. “Unlimited” pricing that sounds too good to question. Consolidation reshaping who’s left standing. There’s a lot of urgency out there, but not a lot of clarity. 

At CDS, we’ve always believed that clarity is what drives real results. Not hype. Not promises. Just honest conversations about what’s changing, what isn’t, and what it means for the people doing the work. 

That’s what this is about. A reality check. For the market, and maybe for ourselves, too. 

The “Unlimited” Reality Check 

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. “Unlimited” AI sounds compelling. All-in pricing sounds even better. But if you’ve been around long enough, you know that nothing is ever truly unlimited. 

There are caps. There are exclusions. There are data types that AI doesn’t handle and workflow steps it doesn’t cover. The technology might be baked into the platform cost, but extracting real value from it? That’s not automatic. 

Pricing models don’t eliminate complexity. Expertise does. Process does. A partner who’s thinking about your whole workflow – not just the AI piece – does. 

We’ve now worked on over 60 AI implementations. Millions of documents analyzed and more than 14 million review decisions were made. And here’s what we’ve learned: the difference between projects that succeed and projects that stall isn’t the technology. It’s whether the process allows time for tools that save money. 

That’s what we mean when we talk about working smarter, promoting less through the workflow, reviewing what matters, storing what you need. It sounds simple. It’s not. But when it works, the results speak for themselves. 

Provider Partnership Isn’t a Slogan 

Here’s a question worth asking: What should you expect from a partner? 

Not a vendor. Not a platform. A partner. 

At CDS, partnership isn’t a marketing term. It’s a business model. We’re independently owned. We’ve grown organically for over 20 years, never through acquisition. We don’t answer to a board or a private equity timeline. We answer to clients. 

That means we can have honest conversations. Sometimes we tell clients AI isn’t the right fit for a matter, even when it costs us a sale. Sometimes we help them reduce their data footprint by 40%, even though that’s storage we could have billed. We’ve built tools that save clients money we’d otherwise charge.

You can reach our leadership directly. You don’t have to navigate layers. When something goes wrong – and it can happen – you’re not waiting on an escalation path. That’s what partnership looks like when it’s built into the business model, not bolted onto the marketing. 

If your provider profits from your inefficiency, they’re not your partner. We’d rather build something that lasts. 

What Defines a “Document” Now? 

Here’s something that doesn’t get discussed enough, even though everyone’s dealing with it: the definition of a document isn’t what it used to be. 

We’re not talking about paper anymore, of course, and we haven’t been for a long time. But even the concept of electronically stored information has evolved. The data people generate today – multimedia, cloud files, hyperlinked data, Slack threads, Teams channels, messages that disappear – bears little resemblance to the static files that shaped our discovery frameworks. 

I’ve been to enough conferences to know that what counts as a “document” is partly in the eye of the beholder. A law firm might see it one way, a corporate legal team another, a regulator another still. But it’s not just a matter of perspective. It’s a matter of how these decisions ripple through the entire process. The choices you make upstream about what to preserve, how to collect, what constitutes a family. those decisions drive cost, defensibility, and review scope downstream. 

Treating modern data like it’s still 2010 creates risk. And treating every new data type as a crisis creates cost. The answer isn’t always simple, but it starts with having the right conversation before collection begins, not during motion practice. 

AI and the Proportionality Standard 

There’s been a lot of talk about AI transforming legal work. It will. It already is. But here’s what tends to get lost in the noise: proportionality hasn’t gone anywhere. 

FRCP 26 still governs. Courts still expect methodology. Documentation. Defensibility. If anything, the availability of AI tools is raising the bar. Parties arguing burden now face harder questions about whether they’ve used the tools that might reduce it. 

The good news is that AI and proportionality aren’t in tension. Done right, they reinforce each other. AI can help you reduce data populations intelligently. It can sharpen burden estimates with real numbers instead of guesswork. It can get you to defensible results faster, if the process allows for it. 

That’s the catch. Most AI projects don’t fail because the technology doesn’t work. They fail because no one built time into the workflow to use it well. Prompt development takes iteration. Validation takes rigor. And none of that happens if you’re already behind before the project starts. 

We’ve built our approach around that reality: systematic, expertise-driven, designed to address common failure points. It’s not about the AI being magic. It’s about the methodology being repeatable. That’s what makes the difference between a one-time experiment and a capability you can rely on. 

Technology Consolidation: Navigating the Shift 

The market is consolidating. Mergers, acquisitions, platforms adding capabilities that used to belong to partners. If you’ve been watching, you’ve seen the pace accelerate. 

For buyers, this raises real questions. Consolidation can simplify things, such as fewer vendors, fewer integrations to manage. But it can also reduce flexibility. Limit options. Create dependencies that are hard to unwind. 

The challenge isn’t just who offers what anymore. It’s whether the technologies you’re using work well together, and whether someone is helping you think through that question honestly. 

There are over 100 eDiscovery providers in the market today. You can’t compare them all. And when the market shifts as fast as it has, the provider you chose three years ago might not be the same company today. 

CDS has stayed independent by design. Independence lets us work across platforms without forcing you to choose. It lets us recommend the solution that’s right for the team and the matter, not what’s right for our quarterly numbers. And it gives us the flexibility to adapt as the market keeps moving. 

We’re not going anywhere. We’ve been at this for over 20 years, recognized for innovation, built to last. In a market that’s shifting fast, stability matters. 

Our Commitment 

I’m not going to pretend we have all the answers. The market is moving fast, and anyone who tells you they’ve got it all figured out is selling something. 

But here’s what I can tell you about CDS: 

We’ll keep telling the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We’ll prioritize outcomes over optics. We’ll invest in expertise, not just technology, because that’s what moves the needle. 

And we’ll keep showing up. Real people. Real results. That’s the only way we know how to do this. 

Thanks for reading. If any of this resonates – or if you disagree – I’d love to hear from you. That’s the conversation worth having.