Law Times

Law Times • may 9, 2011 FOCUS A lawyer's lexicon 10 e-discovery terms you need to know BY JANA SCHILDER For Law Times posing counsel about a particu- lar matter, it's helpful to know some of the basic terms likely to come up during a case. W TERMS RELATED TO SEARCH: Conceptual search Th e use of word meanings to identify documents relevant to a specifi c query. Word mean- ings can be derived from any number of sources, includ- ing dictionaries, which thesauruses, taxonomies, and ontologies as well ematically from the context in as computed math- the words occur. Concept searching typically improves the relevance ranking of the search results and can identify additional documents that are meaningfully related to the query even if they don't have the specifi c query term in them. Contextual search Using one of a number of math- ematical algorithms or linguistic methodologies to enlarge search results to include not only exact Data fi ltering Th e process of identifying specifi c data for inclusion or exclusion based on specifi ed parameters such as date range, authors, and keyword search terms. De-duplication Th e process of comparing elec- tronic records based on their characteristics and removing or marking duplicates within the data set. Th e methodology hen lawyers talk to e-discovery soft- ware vendors or op- term matches but also matches where terms are considered in the context of how and where they frequently occur in a specifi c document collection or more general taxonomy. For example, a search for the term diamond may bring back documents related to baseball but with no reference to the word diamond because they fre- quently occur within the same documents and therefore have a logical association. TERMS RELATED TO PROCESSING: Data extraction Th e process of parsing data from any electronic documents into separate fi elds such as date created, date last accessed, and text. deployed and defi nitions should be agreed upon to deter- mine, for example, whether an exact copy from a diff erent lo- cation such as another mailbox or server tapes is considered to be a duplicate. De-duplication can be selective depending on the agreed-upon criteria. Th e Sedona Conference glossary defi nes case, custodian, cross- custodian, horizontal, and ver- tical de-duplication. Harvesting Th e process of retrieving or col- lecting electronically stored in- formation from any media. An e-discovery vendor or specialist harvests such information from computer hard drives, fi le serv- ers, CDs, and backup tapes for processing and loading to stor- age media or a database man- agement system. Native format Electronic documents have an associated fi le structure defi ned by the original creating appli- cation. Th is fi le structure is re- ferred to as the native format of the document. Because viewing or searching documents in the native format may require the original application, documents may be converted to a neutral medium as part of the record acquisition or archive process. Static formats, such as PDFs, are designed to retain an image of the document as it would look while viewed in the original creating application but don't allow metadata to be seen or the document informa- tion to be manipulated unless agreed-upon metadata and ex- tracted text are preserved. In the conversion to static format, the metadata can be processed, preserved, and electronically associated with the fi le. Not all electronically stored information may be conducive to production in either the native or imaged format. As a result, some other form of production may be necessary. Databases, for example, often present such issues. TERMS RELATED TO PRODUCTION: Form of production Th is deals with the specifi ca- tions for the exchange of docu- ments and data between parties during a legal dispute. It's used to refer both to fi le format and the media on which the docu- ments are produced. Load fi le A fi le that relates to a set of scanned images or electroni- cally processed fi les and indicates where individual pages or fi les belong together as documents as well as where each document be- gins and ends. A load fi le may also con- tain data relevant to the in- dividual documents, such as selected metadata, coded data, and extracted text. Load fi les should be obtained and provided in prearranged or standardized formats to ensure transfer of accurate and usable images and data. Sampling Sampling usually refers to the process of testing a database or a large volume of electronically stored information for the exis- tence or frequency of relevant data. It can be a useful tech- nique in addressing a number of issues related to litigation, in- cluding decisions about which repositories of data are appro- priate to search in a particular matter and determinations of the validity and eff ectiveness of searches or other extraction procedures. Th is partial list is extracted from the Sedona Conference Glos- sary: E-Discovery & Digital Information Management. Th e complete list of defi nitions is available for free download at thesedonaconference.org. PAGE 11 two grange place toronto ontario m5t 1z5 lmi can help lmican.com lmi@lmican.com +1 416 865 1100 LitigationMngmnt_LT_May9_11.indd 1 www.lawtimesnews.com Michael Burn x222 Kathy Howat x226 5/4/11 4:22:07 PM

• Cover
• LawPRO Warning
• Final Remarks
• Focus On E-Discovery