eDiscovery | ECA | Data Analysis | Cull/Filter Docs | Native Review | Review&Production | Report

In today's world almost all legal cases require electronic evidence discovery. Electronic discovery (eDiscovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. Electronic data includes emails, images, calender files, spreadsheets and audio files. GEON Legal Solutions' experts perform eDiscovery services in an efficient and cost effective manner. Our step-by-step eDiscovery process uses the most advanced tools to provide you with everything you need to review, discover and report for important cases.

Early Case Assessment helps determine the best collection strategies for various cases. It reduces the volume of data required for review dramatically. This is done by:

• Data Deduplication - This reduces the amount of electronic data that needs to be reviewed anywhere up to 90%
• Near Deduplication - This groups significantly similar versions of a document that differ by a few words or paragraphs. This is evident when comparing a draft document with its finalised version.
• Email Threading - Enhance case analysis by viewing an entire email conversation together on one screen without having to cycle through each individual message. Bulk, code and folder whole email strings in a few clicks to improve efficiency of the review
• Bulk Coding/Tagging - Code multiple documents with the same issue or category or privilege marking
• Extraction of metadata and text - Electronic documents contain additional information that paper documents cannot provide. Metadata is information embedded in an electronic file that contains information about the file such as date of creation, author, source etc. 
• Culling and filtering data by dates, people, organisations and key words
• First Pass Review Software – enables collaborative analysis, advanced searching, custom data views, custom tagging and email threading 

1. Analyse the data

Data will be organised and analysed for processing based on your core requirements. The volumes and sizes of data noted and your system requirements will be outlined. Our experts capture and extract data from a full range of storage devices including CD's, DVD's, hard drives and USB's.

2. Cull and Filter Documents

Data culling refers to reducing a large document population to a smaller set by reducing, for example, a large number of duplicates and non case relevant material. This can save you time and money by reducing the amount of documents requiring review.

GEON Legal Solutions provides a variety of technical processes to accomplish data culling, including:

• Data/Keyword Filtering - We can keep document population down to a minimum by only processing documents you consider relevent and filtering out unwanted documents using information such as names, date ranges, file types or metadata criteria.
• Email Threading
• Duplicate/Near Duplicate detection and Reporting
• File Deduplication
• Text Deduplication

What is deduplication? Read "Data Deduplication Explained" from a litigation point of view - A GEON Legal Solutions Whitepaper

3. Native Review & Analysis

At this point - blank attachments, exact duplicates and irrelevant file types will be removed. ZIP files and all compressed file contents will be extracted.

Native review and analysis can be undertaken which evaluates collected electronically stored information (ESI) for relevance and privilege. It determines relevant summary information, such as key topics of the case - important people, specific vocabulary and important individual documents in a fast and reliable fashion. Native file review leads to a cost effective solution with a significant reduction in the number of relevant documents. Once these documents are identified they can be tagged for production and further review.

4. Review Strategy & Production

The database field structure is setup. Files, images and eDocs are loaded which allows for fully integrated visual review, analysis, redaction and production capabilities.

Data fields are created and pick lists are prepared for consistent and accurate data entry during review. Such as - Privilege, Relevant, Discovery Case Categories, Lawyer Notes, Document Issues, Redactions.

Once all of the data has been reviewed and analysed, an Affidavit will be produced with a schedule of all relevant documents necessary for discovery. The schedule shall list documents or group them by case discovery categories corresponding with the manner in which the documents have been stored. The schedule can be sorted chronologically or by custodian.

5. Custom Case Reports

Reports can be generated containing details of user activity and the percentage of documents reviewed by each user. They can show you out of the volume of documents reviewed for a case, how many were found to be relevant and furthermore privileged. The report can also provide information about the volume of duplicate/near duplicate documents that were found. Every case is different so GEON will customise these reports according to your specific case requirements.