On-premise e-discovery software isn't for everyone, of course. Companies that aren't "serial litigators" or that aren't involved in pharmaceuticals, technology or other areas in which lawsuits over intellectual property are both common and often fatal to one of the companies involved, will have a much harder time justifying $250,000 or $500,000 for a server and full-scale e-discovery application, Wood says.

E-discovery software prices are coming down as competition rises, however, and most of the leading e-discovery apps are available as cloud-based or SaaS subscriptions, Wood says.

"The whole idea is to know what you have and where it is," Woods says. "It may behoove you to have a tool in-house to help weed out the non-relevant documents so you can do what you need once, instead of producing those same documents over and over again."

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