eDiscovery, or electronic discovery, has become a “big deal” in law firms today, and is a service offered by litigation support companies. Essentially, data and documents are collected that pertain to a specific legal matter in a way that’s far more streamlined and efficient than gathering all of the information together the old-fashioned way – manually. So, what happens in collecting electronically stored information, or ESI? Our goal is to make it as simple as possible for law firm partners, associates, and staff to understand.
Many law firms have an IT staff who may be able to collect documents, however this isn’t always the best idea – particularly if the staff isn’t familiar with eDiscovery protocols. A service provider specializing in electronic discovery is preferable, as experts are capable of determining the best technological processes and tools to assess and collect documents, and to determine the effectiveness of keywords after developing and testing keywords to ensure search query results are logical.
Upon identification of custodians, the process begins. Documents are taken from files, then scanned by a vendor and returned. There are many sources electronic documents are collected from, depending on the input of IT staff and information shared during interviews with custodians. These sources may include Outlook mail, hard drives of laptop or desktop computers, network shared server hard drives, mobile devices (iPads, tablets, phones, etc.), and the structured data in enterprise databases.
The data collected from various sources is typically placed in a computer image file. The process of collecting documents and data must be carefully monitored, so that you know precisely what was collected for every custodian and the source the document was collected from. Attorneys will use the information collected to make critical decisions in legal matters.
From eDiscovery to consulting, scanning documents, and specialty services, including continuing legal education classes, Infinite eDiscovery Solutions offers a wide array of litigation support services for those in the Atlanta area. Ready to learn more? Contact us today!
