Knowledge Base

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Federal eDiscovery Rules (The Cliff Notes Version)

FRCP 26: Offers safeguards to prevent a company from going through exhaustive and potentially unnecessary discovery requests. Rule also offers remedies and adjustments to the scope of discovery.
FRCP 33: Identifies data that is created or stored in electronic format as discoverable allowing access to said data to the requesting counsel.
FRCP 34: Establishes a structured way to resolve disputes over document production. The two available production offerings are native files and TIFF/PDF conversions. At trial, documents are typically presented with page level authentication (bates numbering) in either TIFF/PDF format.
FRCP 37: Gives the power to the court to bring sanctions down against a party “who fails to obey an order to provide or permit discovery.”
FRE 502: Privilege provision allows for protection of data accidentally submitted data that meet attorney-client privileges guidelines.
FRE 901: Requires electronic data to be authenticated with proper metadata tagged.

Electronic Discovery Glossary of Terms (A - K)

Archive Exported copy of data when a hosted case is removed from online access.
Attachment An attachment is a record or file associated with another record for the purpose of storage or transfer. There may be multiple attachments associated with a single "parent" or "master" record.
Audit Trail Record of activity: In computer security systems, a chronological record of when users logged in, how long they were engaged in various activities, what they were doing, and whether any actual or attempted security violations occurred. May enable the reconstruction and examination of a sequence of events and/or changes in an event.
Categorize Data The categorization and sorting of ESI - such as foldering by “concept,” content, subject, taxonomy, etc - through the use of technology - such as search and retrieval software or artificial intelligence to facilitate review and analysis.
Chain of Custody Mathematical base 2 or numbers composed of a series of zeros and ones. Since zeroes and ones can be easily represented by two voltage levels on an electronic device, the binary number system is widely used in digital computing.
Clawback Agreement An agreement that sets forth procedures to protect against waiver of privilege due to inadvertent production of documents or data.
Cloud Computing Internet-based network access available to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications and servers.
Coding Document coding is the process of capturing case-relevant information (i.e. author, date authored, date sent, recipient, date opened, etc.)
Computer Forensics Computer forensics is the use of specialized techniques for recovery, authentication, and analysis of electronic data when a case involves issues relating to reconstruction of computer usage, examination of residual data, and authentication of data by technical analysis or explanation of technical features of data and computer usage. Computer forensics requires specialized expertise that goes beyond normal data collection and preservation techniques available to end-users or system support personnel.
Concept Search Analyzing conceptual groups of words in a document to understand the true meaning, rather than searching only for a word (keyword).
Container File One file that contains multiple documents and document types. Requires decompression or ripping to process.
Contextual Search Searching surrounding text to analyze the context in which a word is used.
Culling Removing a document prior to production or review; generally reduces the volume of data that is produced or reviewed.
Custodian An individual employee is the custodian of ESI located on his/her local computer(s), hard drives, media as well as specific network storage locations under their sole administrative control.
Data Extraction The process of removing files and metadata from backup tapes.
De-duplicate performed on a select and limited basis, such as for file names and types, and is usually based on the hash value of the entire electronic document.
deNist Screening files against the NIST list of computer file types. Separates those files generated by a user from those generated by a system.
Document Retention Policy A systematic plan for reviewing, maintaining and destroying documents and data, including hard copy and electronic documents, databases and e-mails that are created, sent and received in an organization’s ordinary course of business.
ECA Early Case Assessment: ECA deployment would involve the use of specialty software to help cull data collections so that fewer documents are processed for review and production.
Email Thread A series of communications, usually on a particular topic. Threads can be a series of bulletin board messages (for example, when someone posts a question and others reply with answers or additional queries on the same topic). A thread can also apply to emails or chats, where multiple conversation threads may exist simultaneously.
Embedded Metadata Text, numbers, content, data or information that is directly or indirectly input into a Native File by a user and which is not typically visible to the user viewing the output of display of the Native File on screen or as a print-out.
Embedded Object An object embedded within another object, often appearing as an icon or hyperlink.
Encryption A procedure that renders the contents of a message or file unintelligible to anyone not authorized to read it.
Field A name for an individual piece of standardized data, such as the author of a document, a recipient, the date of a document or any other piece of data common to most documents in an image collection, to be extracted from the collection.
Field Separator A code that separates the fields in a record. For example, the CSV format uses a comma as the field separator.
File Extension A tag of three or four letters, preceded by a period, which identifies a data file's format or the application used to create the file. File extensions can streamline the process of locating data. For example, if one is looking for images stored on a computer, one might begin with the .gif and .jpg files.
Filtering Electronic filtering of files for privilege or by keyword, file type or name. Filtering removes files that don't fit the search criteria and reduces the volume of data that requires further investigation.
Forensic Collections A forensic collection is defensible in court and includes all the files and necessary metadata necessary to prove how, where, when, and why the information was collected. Full disk imaging is required when: Criminal activity is suspected Custodians are non-cooperative The investigation is internal or due to regulatory requests Other collection mechanisms will likely miss information
FTP An Internet protocol that enables you to transfer files between computers on the Internet.
Fuzzy Search Subjective content searching (as compared to word searching of objective data). Fuzzy Searching lets the user find documents where word matching does not have to be exact, even if the words searched are misspelled due to optical character recognition (OCR) errors. This search locates all occurrences of the search term, as well as words that are “close” in spelling to the search term.
Index The searchable catalog of documents created by search engine software. Also called “catalog.” Index is often used as a synonym for search engine.
Index/Coding Fields Database fields used to categorize and organize documents. Often user-defined, these fields can be used for searches.
Keyword Any specified word, or combination of words, used in a search, with the intent of locating certain results.

Electronic Discovery Glossary of Terms (L-Z)

Load File A file that relates to a set of scanned images or electronically processed files indicating where individual pages or files belong together as documents, to include attachments, and where each document begins and ends. A load file may also contain data relevant to the individual documents, such as metadata, coded data, text, and the like. Load files must be obtained and provided in prearranged formats to ensure transfer of accurate and usable images and data.
MD5 Hash An algorithm that creates a value to verify duplicate electronic documents. A hash value serves as a digital thumbprint.
Message Headers Message headers generally contain the identities of the author and recipients, the subject of the message, and the date the message was sent.
Metadata Metadata is information about a particular data set which may describe, for example, how, when, and by whom it was received, created, accessed, and/or modified and how it is formatted. Some metadata, such as file dates and sizes, can easily be seen by users; other metadata can be hidden or embedded and unavailable to computer users who are not technically adept. Metadata is generally not reproduced in full form when a document is printed. (Typically referred to by the less informative shorthand phrase "data about data," it describes the content, quality, condition, history, and other characteristics of the data.)
Native File A file saved in the format of the original application used to create the file. Dealing with native files can minimize expensive per-page costs for the traditional TIFF and/or PDF processing and will maximize the relevant information available from the file
Native Format Electronic documents have an associated file structure defined by the original creating application. This file structure is referred to as the "native format" of the document. Because viewing or searching documents in the native format may require the original application (i.e., viewing a Microsoft Word document may require the Microsoft Word application), documents are often converted to a standard file format (i.e., tiff) as part of electronic document processing.
Native Review Review of ESI in its current “native” format using either an application capable of supporting native format review or the original application in which the ESI was created.
Near-duplicate Identification and grouping or tagging of electronic files with “near duplicate” similarities, yet some differences in terms of content or metadata, or both - for example, document versions, emails sent to multiple custodians, different parts of email chains, or similar proposals sent to several clients.
NSF Lotus Notes container file (i.e. database.nsf ); can be either an email database or the traditional type of fielded database. See Lotus Domino.
OST File format used by the Microsoft Outlook as an offline folder file to make it possible for the user to work offline and then to synchronize changes with the Exchange server the next time the user connects. The OST file will be saved on the local computer.
PDF Portable Document Format - A file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF captures formatting information from a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient's monitor or printer as they were intended. To view a file in PDF format, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free application distributed by Adobe Systems.
Proximity Search Process that searches for words or phrases within a prescribed distance of another word or phrase.
PST Personal Folder File: The place where Outlook stores its data (when Outlook is used without Microsoft® Exchange Server). A PST file is created when a mail account is set up. Additional PST files can be created for backing up and archiving Outlook folders, messages, forms and files. The file extension given to PST files is .pst.

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