Hi all,

I'm a solo lawyer in Brazil with prior experience using FTK and Summation. I previously worked at a law firm where I was responsible for installing and troubleshooting the systems, using them, and training other lawyers on how to perform document review in Summation.

Years have gone by, and now I have an opportunity to set up my own practice with in-house e-discovery capabilities. The client will cover the cost of the hardware, but not the software licenses—so using FTK is not an option. For the client, it's a good deal, as I will only charge for the server. For me, it’s an opportunity to establish my own e-discovery environment.

In Brazil, forensic and e-discovery systems and services are extremely expensive, so my goal is to serve a niche market and eventually charge for these services at a much lower rate than major audit firms.

That said, I would really appreciate your input on two points:

Can I achieve similar results to FTK using freeware tools, such as Autopsy and its modules?

What is the expected ratio between evidence size and database size? I have a large evidence set (16 TB), and I haven’t been able to find clear guidance on how much storage I should allocate for the database.

Thank you in advance.