Case Assessment is the first critical phase in our eDiscovery process.  Here we seek to understand the facts of the case and work with counsel to develop a case strategy.  Assistance is provided in regards to preservation notices and opposing objections. Additionally, we will be looking at identifying custodians, keywords, and date ranges.

Data Assessments are then made to determine the sources that will need to be collected.  This may require obtaining information from management, custodians, and/or IT personnel.  Potential sources of data include servers, workstations, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and cloud services, just to name a few.

Our firm belief is that data collection should be made using a technique known as “Forensic Imaging”, where information is preserved on a sector by sector level in what is referred to as a “Bitstream Image”.  This procedure preserves the data in a verifiable manner and maintains active data, deleted data, metadata (such as dates, owner name, revisions, and file system information), and operating system data.

We can of course provide targeted collections when necessary, but often in these type of cases the scope can widen and since the “Forensic Image” was taken initially, no sequential images are necessary.

Using forensic tools the data collections are processed for deleted data (when appropriate) and filtered by a number of criteria.  Filtering may include such information as date ranges, custodian, file types and keywords.  Once filtered, the resulting data is prepared for data review and production.

Smaller data production files can be presented in native (original) or converted to a PDF format.  However, it is not uncommon for file reviews to number in the thousands.  In these cases the data is setup on our eDiscovery+™ data review platform.  The system allows for keyword searches, tags, and redaction.

After thorough review, relevant data is produced as a dataset.  Formats include native (original) format, pdf, or tiff pages.  When needed, load files can be created to allow for importing to other commercial review systems.