Review > Strategies for Effective Review

Email and other electronic documents contain embedded information, commonly referred to as "metadata" or "embedded data." Electronic documents carry their history with them in this form. Email metadata includes information about when an email was created, as well as any attachments it originally contained. This data may have important evidential value in settling factual disputes regarding a document’s source and history. Before producing documents, reviewers need to be aware of, and prepared to handle, any metadata that might help or harm their legal strategy or a client’s position.

Using Review, the following is available:

•View documents in various formats

•Automatically Mark and track Issues for duplicate documents

•Perform keyword searches

•Filter documents based on metadata embedded in the files

•Redact documents

Review is used to apply Marks, Issues, and Comments to documents in the database. By default the tool is set to only apply these decisions once; they are automatically propagated to any duplicate documents. (The exception to this is any marking categories which have been set not to propagate.)

Instant updates of decisions can be viewed by all attorneys involved in a review. This prevents multiple reviewers from classifying documents inconsistently, and it gives reviewers an easy way to record the reasons a decision was made.

Review tracks all reviewer decisions in a log file in the History tab, making it easy to go back later and see when and by whom a decision was made.

During processing, a unique electronic identity for each file in the database is generated. This creates a 128-bit value that serves as the document fingerprint. This fingerprinting process, substantiated through case law, ensures that two documents with the same fingerprint are in fact identical.

When selecting documents for production, Review makes it easy to examine reviewer decisions, redact sensitive information before production, and organize documents using Binders. In addition, attorneys can identify conflicts (such as a document marked for production that contains attachments marked as privileged).