Electronic discovery
Electronic discovery (or e-discovery) refers to refers to any process in which the electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. In other words we can also describe it as dealing with information in Electronic formats or Electronically Stored Information (ESI).
Huge information of e-discovery relates to Electronic information that are created, exchanged and stored every day among individuals and comprises of various types of files including word, excel, PDF, spreadsheets, presentations and many more. E-discovery is different from paper information because of its intangible form, volume, transience and persistence. Also, electronic information is usually accompanied by metadata, which is not present in paper documents. However, paper documents can be scanned into electronic format and then manually coded with metadata. The preservation of metadata from electronic documents creates special challenges to prevent spoliation. Meta data is sometimes relevant and play an important part as evidence in litigation.
It is very important to take care while carrying out any e-discovery for any organization, one should keep in mind that the information collected should not lose its originality. Before any step is taken to collect the data from any computer, laptop one should understand the structure of information stored in the company for which he should get help from the system administrator of the company or the person responsible for storage of data. One should not forget that any wrong step taken in collecting the data might change the information (Metadata) of the documents which sometimes play a major role as evidence in the case.
Although converting documents to static image formats (tiff & jpeg) had become the standard document review method for almost two decades, native format review has increased in popularity as a method for document review since around 2004. Because it requires the review of documents in their original file formats, applications and toolkits capable of opening multiple file formats have also become popular. This is also true in the ECM (Electronic Content Management) storage markets which are converging quickly with ESI technologies.
The conversion of native files into an image format that does not require use of the native applications. This is useful in the redaction of privileged or sensitive information, since redaction tools for images are traditionally more mature, and easier to apply on uniform image types. Efforts to redact similarly petrified PDF files have resulted in the removal of redacted layers and exposure of redacted information, such as social security numbers and other private information (needs citation).
Traditionally, electronic discovery vendors had been contracted to convert native files into TIFF images (for example 10 images for a 10 page Microsoft Word document) with a load file for use in image-based discovery review database applications. Increasingly, database review applications have embedded native file viewers with tiff-capabilities. With both native and image file capabilities, it could either increase or decrease the total necessary storage, since there may be multiple formats and files associated with each individual native file. Deployment, storage and best practices are becoming especially critical and necessary to maintain cost-effective strategies.
Huge information of e-discovery relates to Electronic information that are created, exchanged and stored every day among individuals and comprises of various types of files including word, excel, PDF, spreadsheets, presentations and many more. E-discovery is different from paper information because of its intangible form, volume, transience and persistence. Also, electronic information is usually accompanied by metadata, which is not present in paper documents. However, paper documents can be scanned into electronic format and then manually coded with metadata. The preservation of metadata from electronic documents creates special challenges to prevent spoliation. Meta data is sometimes relevant and play an important part as evidence in litigation.
It is very important to take care while carrying out any e-discovery for any organization, one should keep in mind that the information collected should not lose its originality. Before any step is taken to collect the data from any computer, laptop one should understand the structure of information stored in the company for which he should get help from the system administrator of the company or the person responsible for storage of data. One should not forget that any wrong step taken in collecting the data might change the information (Metadata) of the documents which sometimes play a major role as evidence in the case.
Although converting documents to static image formats (tiff & jpeg) had become the standard document review method for almost two decades, native format review has increased in popularity as a method for document review since around 2004. Because it requires the review of documents in their original file formats, applications and toolkits capable of opening multiple file formats have also become popular. This is also true in the ECM (Electronic Content Management) storage markets which are converging quickly with ESI technologies.
The conversion of native files into an image format that does not require use of the native applications. This is useful in the redaction of privileged or sensitive information, since redaction tools for images are traditionally more mature, and easier to apply on uniform image types. Efforts to redact similarly petrified PDF files have resulted in the removal of redacted layers and exposure of redacted information, such as social security numbers and other private information (needs citation).
Traditionally, electronic discovery vendors had been contracted to convert native files into TIFF images (for example 10 images for a 10 page Microsoft Word document) with a load file for use in image-based discovery review database applications. Increasingly, database review applications have embedded native file viewers with tiff-capabilities. With both native and image file capabilities, it could either increase or decrease the total necessary storage, since there may be multiple formats and files associated with each individual native file. Deployment, storage and best practices are becoming especially critical and necessary to maintain cost-effective strategies.
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