Electronic Discovery

So far in this blog series, we’ve taken a look at the ‘litigation support culture’ circa1980, and we’ve covered how databases were built and used.  We’ve come a long way since then, and in the next posts I’m going to talk a bit about how things evolved.  But first, if you missed the earlier posts in this series, they can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Litigators who used databases circa 1980 – for the most part – recognized a significant improvement in efficiencies.  As technology and approaches evolved over time, more efficiencies were realized.

One of the first big changes in how we worked was the use of microfilm.  Paper documents were still photocopied and coded, but microfilm became the preferred mechanism for storing and retrieving documents.  While the technology had been around for quite a long time, the litigation projects I worked on used paper repositories up until the early 1980s, which is when microfilm started to become the standard. This approach offered multiple advantages, the most significant being:

1. It dramatically reduced the amount of space required to store a document collection.  The documents for a large case could be stored in a box or two rather than in a room or two. This also meant that it was reasonable to have multiple copies of a document collection stored in offices convenient for the litigation team, rather than a single, central repository of documents.
2. Attorneys still used central repositories to handle large document pulls, but with microfilm It was faster and easier to retrieve those documents — turnaround time was much better.
3. It preserved the integrity of the document collection.  Once a collection was filmed, pages wouldn’t be lost, shuffled, or damaged.

So, what is microfilm and how does it work?  Micro-reproductions of document pages are stored on reels of film.  Here’s a picture:

Those reels are labeled with the inclusive document number range.  Now — when doing a document pull – instead of locating a box and pulling a document to photocopy, you would locate a reel, thread it on a microfilm reader (see picture above), scroll to the correct frame, and hit a print button.

This approach evolved even further, and we started using microfiche.  The principle was the same, but the film was stored on cards instead of reels:

The cards were stored in sleeves labeled with the inclusive document numbers, and the cards were inserted into a microfiche reader.

Let me point out that microfilm and microfiche are still in use today in many libraries around the country.  Most libraries are no longer ‘filming’ new documents (they’re using imaging technology), but many still have historic collections of newspaper and magazine articles stored on microfilm or microfiche.

Tune in next week — we’ll continue discussion of how the litigation world circa 1980 evolved and got to where it is today.

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

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

So far in this blog series, we’ve taken a look at the ‘litigation support culture’ in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, we’ve covered how databases were built, and we started discussing how databases were used.  We’re going to continue that in this post.  But first, if you missed the earlier posts in this series, they can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

In last week’s post, we covered searching a database.  As I mentioned, searches were typically done by a junior level litigation team member who was trained to use the search engine.  Search results were printed on thermal paper, and that paper was flattened, folded accordion style, and given to a senior attorney to review – with the goal of identifying the documents he or she would like to see.  Those printouts included information that was recorded by a coder for each document.  A typical database record on a printout might look like this:

DocNo: PL00004568 – 4572

DocDate: 08/15/72

DocType: LETTER

Title: 556 Specifications

Characteristics: ANNOTATED; NO SIGNATURE

Author: Jackson-P

Author Org: ABC Inc.

Recipient: Parker-T

Recipient Org: XYZ Corp.

Copied: Franco-W; Hopkins-R

Copied Org: ABC Inc.

Mentioned: Phillips-K; Andrews-C

Subjects: A122 Widget 556; C320 Instructions

Contents: This letter incudes specifications for product 556 and requests confirmation that it meets requirements.

Source: ABC-Parker

The attorney reviewing the printout would determine (based on the coded information) which documents to review – checking those off with a pen.

The marked up printout was delivered to the archive librarian for ‘pulling’.  We NEVER turned over the original (from the archive’s ‘original working copy’).  Rather, an archive clerk worked with the printout, locating boxes that included checked documents, and locating the documents within those boxes. The clerk made a photocopy of each document, returned the originals to their boxes, and placed the photocopies in a second box.  When the ‘document pull’ was complete, a QC clerk verified the copies against the printout to ensure nothing was missed, and then the copies were delivered to the attorney.

In last week’s post, I mentioned how long it took for a database to get built.  Once the database was available for use, retrievals were slow, by today’s standards.  Depending on the number of documents to be pulled, it could take days for an attorney to get a stack of documents back to review.  While that would be unacceptable today, it was a huge improvement over the alternative at the time – which was to flip through an entire document collection eyeballing every page looking for documents of interest.  For example, when preparing for a deposition, a team of paralegals would get to work going through boxes of documents and eyeballing every page looking for the deponent’s name.

Working with a database then was – by today’s standards – done at a snail’s pace.  But the time savings at the time were significant.  And the search results were usually more thorough.  On one project I managed, just as the database loading was completed, an attorney called me to say he was preparing for a deposition and had his paralegals manually review the collection looking for the deponent’s name.  They spent a week doing it and found under 200 documents. He was uncomfortable with those results.  I told him the database was almost available – we just had to do some testing – but I could do a search for him.  I did that while he waited on the phone and quickly reported back to him that the database search found almost twice as many documents.  We delivered the documents to him within a couple of days.

Tune in next week and we’ll cover how the litigation world circa 1980 evolved and got to where it is today.

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

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