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Investing in the Future: Release Highlights for CloudNine LAW & Explore 7.6

As a dedicated eDiscovery provider, CloudNine is committed to providing our network partners and legal clients with efficient software solutions. Advancements to our innovative technologies are largely due to client feedback and support.

After hearing your feedback on the need to expedite document conversion while also reducing cost and dependency on 3rd party applications, we are eager to announce the latest updates to CloudNine LAW and Explore 7.6.  With more than 200 feature updates and enhancements, the leading applications for early case assessment and processing are equipped to process today’s prodigious volumes of data and accelerate your review and production speeds.

By utilizing a robust ingestion engine, LAW and Explore maximize the processing power of a single computer.

As the primary highlight of LAW 7.6, the new Turbo Imager produces static images of native files up to eight times faster than the traditional imaging module.  By reducing client dependency on native applications, Turbo Imager provides on-demand scalability and workflow efficiency. If available, the tool will utilize multiple processing cores to expedite document conversion time. Turbo Imager will be offered together with Turbo Import licenses. For each license of Turbo Import, CloudNine clients will also receive a license of Turbo Imager or vice versa.

Improved reporting capabilities in  Explore 7.6 provide greater visibility into case metrics, such as original source file counts and sizes, as well as filtered file counts and sizes.. Rather than creating additional copies of data during ingestion, Explore reads and extracts metadata and text from the source, leaving it in place.  After searching and culling, clients may create copies when they are ready to export the information for review. This improvement reduces security risks by minimizing the number of identical files that need to be managed. The reduction in data volumes also decreases review time and expenses by as much as 70%. Additionally, Explore’s Import Library has improved its analysis abilities by recognizing more file types and email components.

To learn more and see a live demonstration, register to view the webinar:  Investing in the Future:  LAW and Explore ver. 7.6 Release or click to request a demonstration.

 

Investing in the Future: Release Highlights for CloudNine LAW & Explore 7.6
 Investing in the Future: Release Highlights for CloudNine LAW & Explore 7.6 150 150 CloudNine

Improve Data Processing Efficiency, One File At A Time

One of the keys to success for any great legal service provider (LSP) is to reduce as many inefficiencies from your operations as possible. 

While there are several areas where you can make marked improvements, data processing can provide you with a great ROI so you can be more efficient and offer improved service levels to your clients. 

Common Inefficiency Challenges for Your LSP’s Data Processing

When it comes down to it, any eDiscovery process that takes unnecessary time or adds costs hurts your LSP. A few of the more common inefficiencies that affect your business include:

  • Overly-expensive data storage costs
  • Slow handoff time between steps in the eDiscovery process
  • Workflows that include too many unnecessary steps

However, one major inefficiency that doesn’t get mentioned enough is the thoroughness or depth of your data processing solution. 

Some data processing software has been found to miss as much as 3% of the files provided. We are not talking about junk embedded files but Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, Excel, etc. When you think of it as only 3 out of 100, it doesn’t seem that detrimental. However, when you consider that your LSP may have to process more than a million files, you’re now missing tens of thousands of documents.

The reason this happens is data processing software doesn’t go deep enough when extracting and indexing files. 

For example, you may have an email with a PowerPoint presentation attached. Your software will most likely pull both of these with no issues. The problem comes when you have a document embedded in that PowerPoint presentation. That last document isn’t extracted which means it’s not indexed or searchable. 

With a data processing software that does not provide your LSP with the value you need, your clients take note. Learn how you can grow your organization sustainably without sacrificing quality in our eBook: 4 Ways Legal Service Providers Can Built Value & Boost Margins.

How Data Processing Inefficiencies Impact Your LSP 

Data processing inefficiencies can lead to some major challenges to your LSP operations. They slow down your workflows, tie up key personnel that could be focusing their energies elsewhere and cost you money. 

Additionally, if your data processing solution doesn’t go deep enough and extract 100% of the files you’ve received through your eDiscovery services, you’re opening your LSP up to three primary risks:

  • Missing critical data that could either help or hinder your clients’ litigation
  • Neglecting to share requested data resulting in sanctions 
  • Inadvertently sharing privileged information with unauthorized parties

Any of these scenarios can negatively affect how you run your business while potentially damaging your reputation and your relationship with your clients. 

How to Make Your LSP Data Processing More Efficient

One of the easier ways to make your data processing more efficient is to simply streamline your workflow processes by following best practices:

  • Establish your settings/tagging procedures upfront
  • Make sure you have enough data storage and human resources for your machine/workflow
  • Allow for compound document extraction
  • Allow for language analysis
  • Get automated OCRs
  • Establish family relationships between the data 

In CloudNine Explore, you can create workflow processes that perform all of these tasks during the initial upload so the data is extracted, indexed, and prepared for the next step faster and with more automation. 

You just set up the tasks you want to perform and create the case. Automation handles the rest. This cuts out an unnecessary and irrelevant manual intervention that slows down the process and ties you to slow and cumbersome tasks. 

Plus, you can rest assured that CloudNine Explore will be thorough, so you don’t miss out on any important or critical documents. Then you can convert everything to text or OCR, index it all for search and cull the data so you have a more streamlined data collection. 

You shouldn’t be constrained by your data processing software. With CloudNine Explore, you can build unique workflows that leverage the automation so you can have full control over your workflow, using the software in new, inventive ways. This allows you to save time and money to explore new, revenue-generating ventures like offering improved levels of services. 

Discover what CloudNine Explore can do for your LSP, learn more about our eDiscovery engine here.

Using Data Processing to Offer Better LSP Service Levels

While your LSP may have launched offering a simple eDiscovery solution like data processing, there’s an opportunity to grow your business by offering additional services to your clients. 

Some LSPs perform data processing but outsource their document review services to 3rd parties. By doing so, you quickly lose control of the data and give away revenue that you can easily keep in-house. By controlling the data processing and review, you control the project, the timeline, and the costs. 

Ready or not, it’s time to up your offering and make your data processing more efficient. Discover how CloudNine offers the best eDiscovery software to help you save time and increase your revenue; schedule a free demo today.

 

Data Processing: The Key To Expanding Your LSP’s Bottom Line

Ask any legal service provider (LSP) about how they can increase their revenue and you’ll undoubtedly get a variety of answers, such as:

  • Go paperless
  • Use different fee structures
  • Fire non paying clients
  • Automate labor intensive tasks

While opportunities vary depending on a variety of factors, one consistent challenge you might come across is setting aside the time to explore any new possibilities. Freeing up time will allow your LSP to grow in new and unexpected ways and give your organization the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen demands.

All you have to do is find ways to increase your productivity and the easiest way to do this is through new technology. In fact, many law firms are already headed in this direction:

  • 53% of law firms think technology will boost their revenue by allowing them to offer better services.
  • 65% of law firms increased their technology investments in 2019.
  • 25% of tech budgets were allocated to ‘innovative technologies.’

Where’s the best place to start?  Simple. You need to streamline your data processing workflows.

 

Common Data Processing Challenges You Might Encounter

Not all data processing tools are designed equally. There are some that present their own unique challenges that could hinder your ability to meet your true potential.

In order to streamline and free up your LSP’s time, keep the following in mind when looking at potential data processing tools:

  • Can you edit and add newly discovered fields?
    • Having the flexibility to edit and add newly discovered fields will prevent your team from having to review data over and over again.
  • Should every piece of data be pushed to the review platform?
    • If every piece of data is pushed to the eDiscovery review platform, your LSP may have to pay higher hosting fees.
  • Is the data stored in a public cloud-based environment?
    • Storing data in the public cloud could cause your organization to lose control of the data and hosting costs.
  • Can you filter out data with a true NIST list?
    • This provides your organization insight into another level of data that doesn’t need to be reviewed, and sometimes, can be used to inflate your case.

Some companies charge $15 per GB per month to host your data in a public cloud environment. That doesn’t give you much room to work with when offering the best deal with your clients.

The alternative? Hosting your data in the private cloud allows you to have more control over hosting costs, which allows you to boost your bottom line. Having a data management tool in place will grant your LSP the data control and security you need.  For even more ways to build value with CloudNine, download our eBook: 4 Ways Legal Service Providers Can Build Value and Boost Margins.

The Perks of Being an Efficient Data Processing Tool

Storing your raw data on-prem or in a private cloud lets you control your hosting costs, often dropping the cost down to less than $1 per GB per month. This allows you to reasonably mark up your hosting costs, boosting your bottom line while still providing good value for your clients.

Determining the efficiency of a data processing tool comes down to two factors:

  1. How you’re using the eDiscovery tool
  2. Your data size

The more data you have, the longer it will take to process. Setting up your data processing engine to perform top-level culls removes duplicative or irrelevant data before your even begin. This cuts down on the amount of data pushed further down the line within the workflow.

An efficient data processing tool allows for more automation, allowing you to work on other tasks and optimizing your employee’s time on the clock.

A truly efficient tool allows you to set alerts that let you or the next person in the workflow know when processing is complete. This means you don’t have to have anyone sitting there, watching and waiting for the system to complete its task.

 

How CloudNine Explore Can Save You Time and Money

In many cases, CloudNine Explore saves you approximately 30% of your costs associated with the interaction between your data and your team. If you are asking how that is possible, we break down 4 money-saving tips in our latest eBook.

Through our data culling functionality that removes duplicate data points, we reduce the amount of data you send to review.

Plus, other platforms make a copy of your data as you expand it, creating duplicative and irrelevant data that you have to pay to store. In CloudNine Explore, your data is only expanded after it’s culled and filtered, removing irrelevant data along the way. It’s only then that your data is copied and exported to your review platform.

By reducing this initial data size, you save hosting costs and time further down the workflow process.

  • Analyze your data quicker
  • Process your data more efficiently
  • Speed up decision-making processes

If you’re ready to utilize eDiscovery law software to improve your data process efficiencies so you have more time and money to explore new, alternative revenue streams, let CloudNine help you. Sign up for our free demo today.

 

Evaluate a Proven Approach to eDiscovery and Data Processing with CloudNine Explore

The digital age has had a major impact on more than just how we occupy our free time. It’s also changed the way we review and process legal data.  

 Lawyers and paralegals handle much more than the physical evidence of discovery. Most law firms sift through unprecedented volumes of evidence that come with the digital age. 

 

When Data Volumes Exceed Capacity: Controlling The Ever Growing Amount of Data

Legal service providers (LSPs) review and process massive sets of complex and diverse digital content oftentimes, in the terabytes. For context, consider this comparison of data:

  • 1 MB = a 400-page book
  • 1 GB = over a thousand 400-page books
  • 1 TB = more than a million 400-page books

Faced with this overwhelming volume of data, an eDiscovery solution capable of working at a high speed and top-of-the-line accuracy will equip you to fight your cases with maximum efficiency. 

Reaping the Benefits Out of Cloud-Based Discovery Software

You can also lose control of your data in expensive cloud platforms. You’re completely dependent on THEIR solution, as they hold your data hostage indefinitely, at whatever rates they set.  Plus, if an eDiscovery solution doesn’t have the capacity to scale with your ever-increasing data needs or carry the solutions you need, you can suffer from ineffective workflow functionality. 

Your organization needs an eDiscovery solution that provides you with:

  • A great degree of workflow flexibility with on-premise and cloud solutions
  • The ability to add new fields, as needed
  • The power to flex up and down the data storage as you consume, allowing you to only pay for what you need
  • The process of continuous improvement in regards to their data processing engine

With a cloud-based eDiscovery solution capable of handling the volume and variety of data you have in addition to the functionality and features you need, you will be able to work efficiently.

 

Evaluating The CloudNine Explore Solution

As the industry leader for processing eDiscovery data, CloudNine Explore is based on four key components:

  • Explore
  • Assess
  • Protect
  • Deliver

Explore:  

CloudNine Explore helps you navigate your way through massive volumes of data to identify risk, determine the scope of the project and control your costs. This helps you uncover important information about the data before you begin:

  • How much data is there?
  • What type of data has been collected?
  • What languages are included in the data?
  • What data is hidden from view?
  • Where did the data come from?

Knowing this information will help you evaluate the risk and potential cost of litigation at the earliest possible point.   This knowledge enables you to set more realistic costs to process and store the data, as well as to determine the size of your review team and necessary skill sets. 

Assess:  

With CloudNine Explore, you can inspect and review your data using both automated and manual processes. When you receive hundreds of thousands of documents and files through eDiscovery, you need to be able to process through it quickly and efficiently. CloudNine Explore’s multi-threaded, multi-core indexing functionality helps you filter through your exported data faster so you can pull only the data you need. 

Being thoughtful about your research and using specific keyword search terms to promote specific documents, helps you filter out data like specific email domain names for later review.

Protect:  

If the integrity of your data is compromised, lost, distorted or manipulated, the consequence can be devastating to your case. 

CloudNine Explore allows you to securely upload, ingest and preserve all relevant data for your ongoing investigations or litigation with an easier and more efficient eDiscovery platform.

All your data is stored securely in a single, on-prem location, housed safely behind the firewall. This safety net saves money while giving you direct access to your data so you know exactly where it is at all times.

Deliver:  

Sharing discovered assets with the opposing side for review is more than a courtesy, it’s required.  CloudNine Explore makes it easy to provide information as required for legal production or further investigation so you stay compliant. 

Avoid costly and time-consuming production of redundant and unnecessary documents while reducing the risk of producing privileged or protected content. 

 

Faster Data Ingestion, Faster ROI With CloudNine Explore

CloudNine Explore saves you money, which in turn positions your project to yield high ROI. 

  • Explore works extremely fast, which means less time spent processing and reviewing data. 
  • Explore stores your data securely in a single, on-prem location, which provides your organization with consistent and transparent pricing. 
  • Integration costs are minimal because of its simplicity. Installation, scale, and automation are simple and straightforward. You don’t even need an IT department to deploy it. 

Now that you’ve learned how CloudNine Explore allows you to safely store and process your data; request a free demo to learn how you can save time and money.

 

EDRM Announces Five New Projects: eDiscovery Best Practices

Did anybody doubt that EDRM under the leadership of Mary Mack and Kaylee Walstad was going to be doing BIG things?  If you did doubt it, here’s an announcement that signals that EDRM will be busy creating and improving frameworks, resources and standards within the eDiscovery community.

Last week, EDRM announced five new projects and is seeking new contributors for them.  They are:

Data Sets: This new project is being championed by Cash Butler, founder of Clarilegal, and is seeking project participants. “Everyone still tests and demonstrates with the very old and familiar data set that is comprised primarily of Enron email and attachment data,” claims Cash Butler. “A new modern data set needs to be created that is focused on modern data types as well as email. Slack, Snapchat, Instagram, text messaging, GPS and many other data types that are needed for testing and demonstrating how they process and present in a useful way. In addition, to creating the new data set we will also look to form a framework for community members to easily add, curate and update the data set to stay current.”

One word: Hallelujah!  We’ve needed new up-to-date data sets for years to replace the old Enron set, so I’m hopeful this team will make it happen.

Processing Specifications: John Tredennick, founder of Merlin Legal Open Source Foundation is championing this project with the help of co-trustees Craig Ball, president, Craig D. Ball P.C. (who recently created a processing primer) and Jeffrey Wolff, director of eDiscovery services and principal architect, ZyLAB. The Processing Specifications project will run in parallel with the Merlin Foundation’s programming project for processing.

Data Mapping: Eoghan Kenny, associate, senior manager data projects and Rachel McAdams (no, not her), data projects, at A & L Goodbody, Ireland are championing this project, which the need has arisen due to the new SEAR Act (senior executive accountability regime) to help provide frameworks around who is responsible for what data and where it resides. “The importance of data mapping has grown enormously in Europe – not just for GDPR and investigation purposes, but also to help organizations deal with the increasingly active regulatory environment,” says Kenny. “However, most of our clients struggle with data mapping as it is a new concept to most organizations, with no clear business owner, that often sits in limbo between the “business” and “IT”! The goals of this project are to build frameworks for data mapping exercises, and provide clear guidelines on what the process should look like, because the better an organization understands its data, the cheaper it is to comply with any discovery or investigation obligations.”

State eDiscovery Rules: Suzanne Clark, discovery counsel at eDiscovery CoCounsel and Janice Yates, senior e-discovery consultant at Prism Litigation are co-championing this project and how the State Rules relate to the eDiscovery Federal rules in place. The vision for the State eDiscovery Rules project is to provide a starting point for attorneys to quickly reference the rules in different states and compare and contrast to the federal rules with the various state rules relating to eDiscovery. For example, if an attorney is involved with a case in a state where they are not accustomed to practicing, this EDRM resource will allow them to quickly get up to speed on that state’s rules, where they differ and where they align with the federal rules. “The project work happening at the EDRM is impressive,” says Suzanne Clark. “The time and talent that the project leads and participants donate to the cause of advancing eDiscovery knowledge and good practices will surely serve to advance the industry and legal practice in the discovery realm.”  The project will start with Florida and Michigan and are looking for more contributors from other states.

I look forward to this as we need an up to date resource here – I’m not sure that the ones I’ve covered in the past are being actively updated.

Pro Bono: This project was just launched and has had an overwhelming reach out from people in every area, attorneys, paralegals (and associations), litigation support professional, service providers, platforms, corporations and those in need. We are still seeking assistance as the need for access to justice is great. Stewarded by BDO director, George Socha and HB Gordon, eDiscovery manager for the Vanguard Group, the Pro Bono project will create subgroups to accelerate providing eDiscovery services to those in need.

As the announcement notes, projects, both ongoing and newly initiated, will be advanced at the EDRM Summit/Workshop 2020 at Duke University School of Law, June 24-26. I’ll have more to say about that as we get closer to it, but it certainly sounds like it will be very busy!  I’m certainly planning to be there!

So, what do you think?  Are you interested in participating in EDRM?  As always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Here’s a Terrific Listing of eDiscovery Workstream Processes and Tasks: eDiscovery Best Practices

Let’s face it – workflows and workstreams in eDiscovery are as varied as organizations that conduct eDiscovery itself.  Every organization seems to do it a little bit differently, with a different combination of tasks, methodologies and software solutions than anyone else.  But, could a lot of organizations improve their eDiscovery workstreams?  Sure.  Here’s a resource (that you probably already know well) which could help them do just that.

Rob Robinson’s post yesterday on his terrific Complex Discovery site is titled The Workstream of eDiscovery: Considering Processes and Tasks and it provides a very comprehensive list of tasks for eDiscovery processes throughout the life cycle.  As Rob notes:

“From the trigger point for audits, investigations, and litigation to the conclusion of cases and matters with the defensible disposition of data, there are countless ways data discovery and legal discovery professionals approach and administer the discipline of eDiscovery.  Based on an aggregation of research from leading eDiscovery educators, developers, and providers, the following eDiscovery Processes and Tasks listing may be helpful as a planning tool for guiding business and technology discussions and decisions related to the conduct of eDiscovery projects. The processes and tasks highlighted in this listing are not all-inclusive and represent only one of the myriads of approaches to eDiscovery.”

Duly noted.  Nonetheless, the list of processes and tasks is comprehensive.  Here are the number of tasks for each process:

  • Initiation (8 tasks)
  • Legal Hold (11 tasks)
  • Collection (8 tasks)
  • Ingestion (17 tasks)
  • Processing (6 tasks)
  • Analytics (11 tasks)
  • Predictive Coding (6 tasks)*
  • Review (17 tasks)
  • Production/Export (6 tasks)
  • Data Disposition (6 tasks)

That’s 96 total tasks!  But, that’s not all.  There are separate lists of tasks for each method of predictive coding, as well.  Some of the tasks are common to all methods, while others are unique to each method:

  • TAR 1.0 – Simple Active Learning (12 tasks)
  • TAR 1.0 – Simple Passive Learning (9 tasks)
  • TAR 2.0 – Continuous Active Learning (7 tasks)
  • TAR 3.0 – Cluster-Centric CAL (8 tasks)

The complete list of processes and tasks can be found here.  While every organization has a different approach to eDiscovery, many have room for improvement, especially when it comes to exercising due diligence during each process.  Rob provides a comprehensive list of tasks within eDiscovery processes that could help organizations identify steps they could be missing in their processes.

So, what do you think?  How many steps do you have in your eDiscovery processes?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Exceptions are the Rule: eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays

Here’s our latest blog post in our Throwback Thursdays series where we are revisiting some of the eDiscovery best practice posts we have covered over the years and discuss whether any of those recommended best practices have changed since we originally covered them.

This post was originally published on November 12, 2010, when eDiscovery Daily was less than two months old (over nine years ago!).  Despite that, the advice below is still largely as written back then – it is still applicable today pretty much as is.  Enjoy!

Virtually every collection of electronically stored information (ESI) has at least some files that cannot be effectively searched.  Corrupt files, password protected files and other types of exception files are pretty much constant components of your ESI collection and it can become very expensive to make these files searchable or reviewable.  Being without an effective plan for addressing these files could lead to problems – even spoliation claims – in your case.

How to Address Exception Files

The best way to develop a plan for addressing these files that is reasonable and cost-effective is to come to agreement with opposing counsel on how to handle them.  The prime opportunity to obtain this agreement is during the meet and confer with opposing counsel.  The meet and confer gives you the opportunity to agree on how to address the following:

  • Efforts Required to Make Unusable Files Usable: Corrupted and password protected files may be fairly easily addressed in some cases, whereas in others, it takes extreme (i.e., costly) efforts to fix those files (if they can be fixed at all). Up-front agreement with the opposition helps you determine how far to go in your recovery efforts to keep those recovery costs manageable.
  • Exception Reporting: Because there will usually be some files for which recovery is unsuccessful (or not attempted, if agreed upon with the opposition), you need to agree on how those files will be reported, so that they are accounted for in the production. The information on exception reports will vary depending on agreed upon format between parties, but should typically include: file name and path, source custodian and reason for the exception (e.g., the file was corrupt).

If your case is in a jurisdiction where a meet and confer is not required (such as state cases where the state has no meet and confer rule for eDiscovery), it is still best to reach out to opposing counsel to agree on the handling of exception files to control costs for addressing those files and avoid potential spoliation claims.

Next time, we’ll talk about the types of exception files and the options for addressing them.  Be patient – next Thursday is a holiday!  ;o)

So, what do you think?  Have you been involved in any cases where the handling of exception files was disputed?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

The Files are Already Electronic, How Hard Can They Be to Load?: eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays

Here’s our latest blog post in our Throwback Thursdays series where we are revisiting some of the eDiscovery best practice posts we have covered over the years and discuss whether any of those recommended best practices have changed since we originally covered them.

This post was originally published on July 25, 2013, when eDiscovery Daily was less than three years old.  It was a throwback post of sorts even back then as it referenced several earlier posts and was inspired for today’s post by Craig Ball’s new primer – Processing in E-Discovery – which I covered yesterday on our blog.  Craig’s new primer immediately confronts a myth that many attorneys believe with regard to electronic files and how easily (and quickly) they can be made ready for production.  Spoiler alert!  There’s a lot more to it than most attorneys realize.  Craig’s primer does a thorough job of explaining the ins and outs of that, but if you haven’t gotten a chance to read it all yet – you should – here are a few specific reasons that I explained over six years ago why the files need processing to be reviewable and useful.  Enjoy!

Since hard copy discovery became electronic discovery, I’ve worked with a number of clients who expect that working with electronic files in a review tool is simply a matter of loading the files and getting started.  Unfortunately, it’s not that simple!

Back when most discovery was paper based, the usefulness of the documents was understandably limited.  Documents were paper and they all required conversion to image to be viewed electronically, optical character recognition (OCR) to capture their text (though not 100% accurately) and coding (i.e., data entry) to capture key data elements (e.g., author, recipient, subject, document date, document type, names mentioned, etc.).  It was a problem, but it was a consistent problem – all documents needed the same treatment to make them searchable and usable electronically.

Though electronic files are already electronic, that doesn’t mean that they’re ready for review as is.  They don’t just represent one problem, they can represent a whole collection of problems.  For example:

These are just a few examples of why working with electronic files for review isn’t necessarily straightforward.  Of course, when processed correctly, electronic files include considerable metadata that provides useful information about how and when the files were created and used, and by whom.  They’re way more useful than paper documents.  So, it’s still preferable to work with electronic files instead of hard copy files whenever they are available.  But, despite what you might think, that doesn’t make them ready to review as is.

So, what do you think?  Do you work with attorneys who still expect the files to be available for review immediately?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Why Process in eDiscovery? Isn’t it “Review Ready”?: eDiscovery Best Practices

As I’ll point out in tomorrow’s blog post (spoiler alert!), I’ve been asked a variation of this question for years.  But, perhaps the best answer to this question lies in Craig Ball’s new primer – Processing in E-Discovery.

Craig, who introduced the new primer in his latest blog post – the 200th of his excellent Ball in Your Court blog – asked the questions posed in the title of this post in the beginning of that primer (after the Introduction) and confronts a myth that many attorneys believe with regard to electronic files and how easily (and quickly) they can be made ready for production.  As Craig explains:

“Though all electronically stored information is inherently electronically searchable, computers don’t structure or search all ESI in the same way; so, we must process ESI to normalize it to achieve uniformity for indexing and search.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  In the Introduction, Craig says this:

“Talk to lawyers about e‐discovery processing and you’ll likely get a blank stare suggesting no clue what you’re talking about.  Why would lawyers want anything to do with something so disagreeably technical? Indeed, processing is technical and strikes attorneys as something they need not know. That’s lamentable because processing is a phase of e‐discovery where things can go terribly awry in terms of cost and outcome. Lawyers who understand the fundamentals of ESI processing are better situated to avoid costly mistakes and resolve them when they happen.”

Then, Craig illustrates the point with a variation of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) which extracts processing as “an essential prerequisite” to Review, Analysis and Production (while noting that the EDRM model is a “conceptual view, not a workflow”).

As Craig discusses, to understand eDiscovery processing is to understand the basics of computers – from bits and bytes to ASCII and Unicode to Hex and Base64 and Encoding.  How to identify files based on file extensions, binary file signatures and file structure.  Why data compression makes smart phones, digitized music, streaming video and digital photography possible.  And, much more.

Want to know how “E-Discovery” would be written in a binary ASCII sequence?  Here you go:

0100010100101101010001000110100101110011011000110110111101110110011001010111001001111001

Craig covers the gamut of processing – from ingestion to data extraction and document filters, from recursion and embedded object extraction to family tracking and exceptions reporting, from lexical preprocessing to building a database and Concordance(!) index.

Yes, it’s technical.  But, a very important read if you’re an attorney wanting to better understand eDiscovery processing and what’s involved and why the files need to be processed in the first place.  Many attorneys don’t understand what’s involved and that leads to unreasonable expectations and missed deadlines.

Craig’s new primer is a 55-page PDF file that is chock-full of good information about eDiscovery processing – a must read for attorneys and eDiscovery professionals alike.  He wrote it for the upcoming Georgetown Law Center Advanced E-Discovery Institute on November 21 and 22, which you can still register for (and get a discount for, per Craig’s blog post).  My only quibble with it is the spelling of “E-Discovery”, but that’s a quibble for another day (you’re welcome, Ari Kaplan!).  :o)

So, what do you think?  Are you mystified by eDiscovery processing?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.