The risk of sanctions resulting from 1) corporations doing self-collections of electronic evidence and 2) law firms internally processing a client’s electronic evidence (creating sanction risk for BOTH the firm and its client) is greater than the risk of sanctions if corporations and law firms conduct eDiscovery by using qualified third-party vendors. If errors occur (e.g. failing to collect or produce relevant documents), lesser, or no sanctions are more likely to be applied to the law firm OR its client if defensible eDiscovery processes have been executed by qualified independent vendors rather than by the parties or their counsel.