I don't think you should discount how much of a difference this makes. It slides right in to users' existing workflow requiring far less effort on their part.
I don't think I am discounting how much of a difference it makes. My point is simply that without the 1 million documents Malamud handed over, the tool would be largely useless for many months if not years. What Recap does is make Malamud's documents accessible to lawyers (they are presently stuck in massive tar files at bulk.resource.org), and the combined efforts of Malamud and the Recap people, nicely complement each other.