In years past, we have divided the electronic discovery market into four tiers. We continue to use that distinction for this year’s report. The tiers are:

Tier 1 service providers are established in the market, on average have revenues of approximately $39 million, are national and generally international in scope, are widely recognized in the market, and offer a broad range of services. We estimate that approximately 30 providers fit this profile.

Tier 2 service providers average approximately $6.6 million in revenues; also offer a wide variety of services; and may be either national or regional in scope although they sometime are active internationally. We estimate that 60 or so providers fall into this category.

Tier 3 service providers are the remainder of providers active in the electronic discovery arena. They may be smaller versions of the Tier 2 providers. They might, however, be larger organizations that only devote a small portion of the energies to electronic discovery. By our estimation, there are over 510 organizations active at this level.

The DIY'ers are law firms and corporations who are doing something more than an inconsequential amount of electronic discovery internally, work that otherwise would have been sent to a provider. We do not have a precise number for this group, but the data indicates a substantial, continuing growth in internal electronic discovery work, in particular among the AmLaw 200 / NLJ 250 and Fortune 100. This year, we estimate that approximately 600 law firms and corporations fall in this grouping.