Reveal, the provider of integrated AI-native platforms that span the eDiscovery lifecycle, today released the 2026 Collaboration Data Risk & Readiness Report, the first comprehensive benchmark study examining how organizations manage collaboration data, like Slack, Miro boards and AI-generated content, during litigation and investigations. The findings reveal a discovery function under severe strain: legal and IT teams spend an average of 26 hours per matter on collection coordination alone, face cost overruns in nearly four out of five matters, and collect the right amount of data in just 2% of cases.
The report, based on a survey of hundreds senior legal and IT professionals across U.S.-based organizations, exposes a structural mismatch between how quickly collaboration platforms have proliferated and the maturity of processes built to manage them. Organizations now actively use an average of 10 separate collaboration platforms, from enterprise chat applications like Teams to video conferencing technology like Zoom, collectively hosting 48TB of data for each matter that grows 46% annually. The emergence of AI-generated content from applications like ChatGPT and Gemini adds yet another layer of complexity that most organizations have yet to address.
“The data tells a sobering story about the gap between how companies use and create massive amounts of data and how legal teams are able to manage that data and ultimately to manage discovery,” said Eric Harmon, CEO of Reveal. “Organizations are spending more than a full work week per matter either over-collecting or under-collecting in 98% of cases. And they’re doing all of this while AI-generated content becomes the fastest-growing data source in discovery.”
Key Findings
The report was produced by Reveal’s Onna platform, the leader in collection and management of collaboration data for eDiscovery. It identifies several critical challenges facing legal and IT departments:
- Collection coordination is a hidden cost center. Organizations spend 26 hours per matter on average coordinating collection, with 55% reporting at least 16 hours and 14% spending over 51 hours.
- Accurate collection is virtually nonexistent. Only 2% of collections are right-sized. In 36% of cases, incomplete scope forces recollection. In 39%, teams over-collect due to uncertainty or inadequate tooling.
- Cost overruns are the norm. Four in five organizations report collaboration data causes cost overruns, with a third saying it happens often.
- Data volumes are outpacing management capabilities. Enterprise data doubles every 21 months. Organizations manage 48TB of collaboration data on average, growing 46% annually.
- IT dependency creates bottlenecks. Nearly 70% of organizations rate IT dependence at 7 out of 10 or higher. Collection requests routed through IT often take days or weeks.
- New data sources derail collections. In 39% of matters, teams discover new data sources mid-collection, forcing restarts.
The AI Content Inflection Point
The report identifies AI-generated content as an emerging challenge that most organizations are unprepared to address. With collaboration platforms already creating collection complexity, the addition of ChatGPT, Gemini and similar tools as data sources compounds the problem for legal teams that lack purpose-built collection infrastructure.
“We’ve hit an inflection point with AI-generated content,” said Harmon. “It’s now the largest and fastest-growing data source in discovery, but until recently, organizations had no way to preserve and collect it at the hold stage. Forward-thinking legal teams recognize that they need technology that can handle both traditional collaboration data and AI-generated content with the same defensible, streamlined workflow.”
The Path Forward
Organizations with standardized workflows, purpose-built technology and strong legal-IT alignment demonstrate faster collection times, fewer cost overruns and greater defensibility confidence.
Reveal addresses these challenges through integrated platforms. Reveal’s Onna provides no-code integrations to 30+ applications, including Slack, Teams, Google Workspace, Zoom, ChatGPT and Gemini, enabling teams to collect AI-generated content, preserve in place, collect when ready and cull early to reduce costs.
The 2026 Collaboration Data Risk & Readiness Report was conducted in partnership with CensusWide between February 24 and April 13, 2026. Survey participants included legal and IT professionals in senior and executive-level roles, including Associate/Assistant General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officers, CIOs, CISOs, Heads of eDiscovery and Heads of Litigation. Organizations ranged from 500 or fewer employees to 10,000+ employees across 13 industries.
For more information about the Reveal suite of products, visit www.revealdata.com, onna.com and logikcull.com. For the full 2026 Collaboration Data Risk & Readiness Report, visit www.onna.com/2026-collaboration-data-risk-readiness-report.
About Reveal
Reveal is the provider of integrated legal AI platforms spanning the eDiscovery lifecycle, including Reveal Enterprise, Logikcull and Onna. As an early innovator in AI, machine learning and automation, the company has driven legal technology adoption for over two decades. Reveal’s suite of solutions is trusted by more than 4,000 legal teams globally, including Am Law 200 firms, Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies and leading global advisory firms, to uncover and strategically act on insights faster across the entire eDiscovery process. For more information, visit www.revealdata.com.
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