About
Electronic discovery (also e-discovery, or ediscovery, eDiscovery, e-Discovery) refers to identification, collection and production of information sought in electronic format (often referred to as electronically stored information or ESI). Electronic discovery in response to a request for production in legal proceedings or disputes such as litigation, government investigations, regulatory reviews, etc. ESI may include emails, documents, presentations, databases, voicemail, audio and video files, social media, web sites, etc.
ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY DATA COLLECTION
The processes and technologies involved in e-discovery are often complex because of the sheer volume of electronic data produced and stored. Further, electronic documents are more dynamic and often contain metadata such as time-date stamps, author and recipient information, file properties, etc.
Preserving the original content and metadata for ESI is necessary in order to eliminate claims of tampering with evidence later in the litigation. E-discovery data collection involves extraction of potentially relevant ESI from its native source (a server, database, email inbox, desktop, mobile device, cloud server, archive, etc.) into a separate repository.
After data is identified, potentially relevant documents are secured – such that they cannot be modified, deleted, erased or otherwise destroyed. Potentially relevant data is collected and then extracted, indexed and prepared to form a database.
DOCUMENT REVIEW AND PRODUCTION
Data is then analyzed to obtain clearly non-relevant documents and e-mails which are separated from the primary data. Search parameters can be negotiated with an opposing counsel or auditor to identify what is being searched and to ensure needed evidence is identified and non-evidence is screened out, thereby reducing the overall effort required to search, review, and produce it. Primary data is then analyzed by reviewers for their relevancy with respect to the legal matter (contract attorneys and paralegals are often used for this phase of the document review).
E-discovery applications and technology enable organizations to pull information and records from the massive volumes of content. Use of computer assisted review (also known as “C.A.R.” or Technology Assisted Review, “T.A.R.”), predictive coding, and other analytic software reduces the number of documents required for review by attorneys and allows the legal team to prioritize the documents. The reduction in the number of documents cuts hours and thus costs. For production, sometimes the relevant documents are converted to a static format such as TIFF or PDF, making redaction of privileged and non-relevant information possible.