Litigation Support Terms Flashcards
(74 cards)
1
Q
Admissible
A
Evidence that is allowable in court
2
Q
Analytics
A
The term used to refer to the various technologies used to provide multiple views into the data set
3
Q
Archive
A
Long term repositories for the storage of records and files
4
Q
Attachment Backup
A
Both the action of and the result of creating a copy of data as a precaution against the loss or damage of the original data
5
Q
Backup tape
A
Portable media used to store copies of data that are created as a precaution against the loss or damage of the original data
6
Q
Batch Processing
A
The processing of a large amount of ESI in a single step
7
Q
Chain-of-Custody
A
The processing and tracking and recording the movement, handling and location of electronic evidence chronologically from collection to production. It is used to verify the authenticity of the ESI.
8
Q
Child Document
A
A file that is attached to another communication file. E.g. the attachment to an email or a spreadsheet imbedded in a word processing document
9
Q
Container File
A
A single file containing multiple documents and/or files, usually in a compressed format; e.g. zip, rar, pst
10
Q
Custodian
A
Most often refers to the individual from whose file systems a group of records were extracted. This person is not necessarily the author of the documents.
11
Q
Data Extraction
A
The process of parsing data from electronic documents to identify their metadata and body contents
12
Q
Data Mapping
A
The process of identifying and recording the location and types of ESI within an organization’s network and policies and procedures related to that ESI
13
Q
De-duplication
A
De-duping. The process of comparing the characteristics of electronic documents to identify and/or remove duplicate records to reduce review time and increase coding consistency
14
Q
De-NIST
A
The process of separating documents generated by a computer system from those created by a user. This automated process utilized a list of file extensions developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
15
Q
Discovery
A
The process of identifying, securing reviewing information that is potentially relevant to the matter and producing information that can be utilized as evidence in the legal process
16
Q
Document Family
A
All parts of a group of documents that are connected to each other for purposes of communication; e.g. an email and its attachments
17
Q
e-Disclosure
A
The eDiscovery process as it is practiced in the European Union
18
Q
Electronic discovery
A
eDiscovery, e-discovery. The process of identifying, preserving, collection, preparing, reviewing and producing ESI in the context of a legal process
19
Q
Electronic evidence
A
Information that is stored in an electronic format this is used to prove or disprove the facts of a legal matter.
20
Q
A
An electronic communication sent or received via a data application designed for that purpose (e.g. MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, Google Gmail)
21
Q
ESI
A
Electronically stored information
22
Q
Filtering
A
The process of specific parameters to remove groups of documents that do not fit those parameters in order to reduce the volume of the data set, e.g. date ranges and keywords
23
Q
Forensics
A
A handling of ESI including collection, examination and analysis, in a manner that ensures its authenticity, so as to provide for its admission as evidence in a court of law.
24
Q
FRCP
A
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the rules that govern eDiscovery and other aspects of the civil legal process.
25
Hash
An algorithm that generates a unique value for each document. It is referred to as a digital fingerprint and is used to authenticate documents and to identify duplicate documents.
26
Image (Drive)
To make an identical copy of a drive including its empty space. (mirror image)
27
Image (File)
To make a picture copy of a document. The most common image formats in eDiscovery are tiff and pdf.
28
Legacy Data
Data whose format has become obsolete.
29
Legal Hold
A communication requesting the preservation, and the resulting preservation of information that is potentially relevant to current or a reasonably anticipated legal matter.
30
Load File
A file used to import data into an eDiscovery system. It defines document parameters for imaged documents and often contains metadata for all ESI it relates to.
31
Media
The device used to store electronic information, e.g. hard drives, back up tapes, DVDs.
32
Metadata
Often referred to as data about data, it is the information that describes the characteristics of ESI, e.g. sender, recipient, author, date. Much of the metadata is not accessible to non-technical users.
33
Native Format
A file that is maintained in the format in which it was created. This format preserves metadata and details about the data that might be lost when the documents are converted to image format, e.g. pivot tables in spreadsheets.
34
Near-duplicate
Two or more files that contain a specified percentage of similarity. Also, the process used to identify those nearly-identical files.
35
Normalization
Reformatting data so that it is stored in a standardized format.
36
OCR
Optical Character Recognition is the process of converting images of printed pages into electronic text.
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Parent Document
A document to which other documents/files are attached.
38
Predictive Coding
A document categorization process that extrapolates the tagging decisions of an expert reviewer across a data set. It is an iterative process that increases accuracy with multiple training passes.
39
Precision
In search results analysis, precision is the measure of the level of relevance to the query in the results set documents. See Recall
40
Processing
The eDiscovery workflow which ingests data, extracts text and metadata, normalizes the data. Some systems include the data indexing and deduplication in their processing workflow.
41
Production
The delivery, to the requesting party, of documents and ESI that meet the criteria of the discovery request.
42
Recall
In search results analysis, recall is the measure of the % of total number of relevant documents in the corpus returned in the results set. See Precision
43
Redact
To intentionally conceal, usually via an overlay, portions of a document considered privileged, proprietary or confidential.
44
Search
The process of looking within a data set using specific criteria (a query). There are several types of search ranging from simple keyword to concept searches that identify documents related to the query even when the query term is not present in the document.
45
Slack space
The unused portion of a disk that exists when the data does not completely fill the space allotted for it. This space can be examined for otherwise unavailable data.
46
Spoliation
The destruction or alteration of data that might be relevant to a legal matter.
47
Structured data
Data stored in a structured format such as a database. Structured data can create challenges in eDiscovery. See Unstructured data
48
TIFF
Tagged Image Format is a common graphic file format. The file extension related to this format is .tif.
49
Unallocated space
Most often, this is space created on a hard drive when a file is marked for deletion. This space is no longer allocated to a specific file. Until it is overwritten, it still contains the previous data and can be retrieved.
50
Unicode
The code standard that provides for uniform representation of character sets for all languages. It is also referred to as double-byte language.
51
Unstructured data
Data that is not stored in a structured format such as word processing documents and presentations.
52
Carving
The process of searching through the unused parts of a disk for files that haven't been overwritten and recovering those files. Word do the wise,(deleted) does not mean gone--deleting a file usually just unlinks it from your computer's file system. With the right software, the deleted files can usually be recovered.
53
Clawback Agreement
A very handy agreement which states that if you accidentally give the other side your privileged documents, they have to give them back and can't use them against you or claim they aren't privileged anymore. There are no known reasons for not having a clawback agreement, but there are very good reasons to have one in place. A serviceable clawback agreement can be written in one paragraph. Go download one, and use it in every case. Like, right now. I'm not kidding.
54
Checksum
A sequence of numbers and letters that is essentially unique for each and every file in the world. Comes in several different flavors, including MD5 and SHA1. Extremely useful for finding duplicates, determining if someone has files they shouldn't have, and identifying evidence.
55
Cost Shifting
When the responding party forces the requesting party to pay for the costs of responding to certain discovery. Often a Solomonic remedy imposed by the Judge when one party is asking for too much but maybe shouldn't be prevented outright from getting it. Under so-called American rules of discovery, cost shifting is unlikely to be applied to well-drafted and reasonable discovery requests.
56
Culling
Processing a large set of data and removing the junk data so that it's easier to search and less expensive to host or transfer. It's best for the parties to agree on the criteria that will be used to cull the data.
57
Custodian
A persons having administrative control of a document or electronic file. For example, the custodian of an email message could be the owner of the mailbox that contains the relevant message.
58
Deduplication
A process that removes multiple copies of the same file from a set of files, leaving you with only one of the copies. This is super helpful when you have to review a large number of files and you don't want to waste your time going line-by-line through to files to see if they are the same. Horizontal deduplication means removing all the duplicates across the board. Vertical deduplication means keeping a copy of a duplicate if it belongs to a different custodian (see above). With vertical deduplication and 9 custodians what is the maximum number of copies of the same file you might have after deduplication? If you answered 9, you are smart. Have a cookie.
59
DeNISTing
One way of culling data (see above). One takes a huge list of checksums (see above) for known junk files and removes any matching files from the data set. The NIST part derives from the National Institute for Standards and Technology, who, among other things, maintains the list of junk files.
60
E-Discovery
A process where the parties to litigation exchange electronic evidence. E-Discovery has been the subject of much teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling, with many lawyers and commentators complaining about its cost and difficulty, but e-discovery is inescapable unless the parties live in caves and do not use computers. E-Discovery tools such as case management, document review, transcript management, timeline software, and others make building a case more efficient. If a lawyer wants to prove that certain facts did or did not occur, then e-discovery is strongly recommended.
61
Forms of Production
Electronic evidence can be 'produced' (i.e., exchanged) in multiple forms. For example, if there is a Word file on your client's laptop, and you need to produce it to another party, you have several choices, (1) you can copy the file to some sort of transfer media (e.g., a thumb drive) to produce an exact copy; (2) you can convert the file to PDF and produce the PDF file; (3) you can print the file to TIFF also produce a load file that contains searchable text; or (4) you can literally print the file out on a piece of paper using a printer and deliver a copy of the paper to the other party. There are pros and cons to each form of production. If you are billing hourly, the only known 'pro' of option 4 (printing) is that it wastes a lot of time and paper, and often results in motion practice. For reasons that we do not comprehend, some attorneys are flustered by native production and instead choose to have files produced PDF. Recommendation, talk about about forms of production with your opposing counsel before discovery starts; if you are requesting evidence, tell the other party (in writing) the form of production that you want.
62
Linear Review
Assume that your client has 1TB of data that could be responsive to discovery requests. Assume that you agree on some keywords with the other party. Assume that those keywords are 'hits' for 500,000 documents. Linear review is the process of having a human--usually a lawyer--set eyes on each of the documents before any of them are produced to the other side. On average, human reviewers can review 55 documents per hour, and the average hourly cost for a reviewer is $70 per hour. That means you’ll spend, ahem, more than $600,000 on document review! The process will also take several months, even for a large review team. But the legal system ain’t got time for this. Discovery is supposed to finish … it can't drag on and on for years while reviewers strain their eyes and wonder if this is what they went to law school for. In short, linear review is a bad idea, and it’s prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Alternatives include technology-assisted review and creative use of keyword searches, selective review, and clawback agreements.
63
Litigation Hold
A document provided to a custodian when litigation is on the horizon or already happening that instructs him or her how to avoid deleting or corrupting evidence. Sometimes litigation hold letters confuse ordinary people by telling them things like "cease rotating backup tapes". Ideally, a litigation hold should be readable and comprehensible by its target audience, and compliance with the hold should be monitored. Watch out for company-sponsored paper shredding or hard-drive dumping events!
64
Load File
A special file that you get (or give) with other files that provides additional information about those files, such as the directories they came from, metadata not contained in the files themselves, Bates numbers corresponding to the files, and information about the requests to which the files are supposed to responsive. Even though load files are essentially 'flat'--i.e., non-relational databases (like Excel files)--they appear in any number of bizarre proprietary formats. There is no agreed-upon standard for formatting load files, and unless one happens to own the same software that was used to generate the load file, viewing one can be a serious pain in the hindquarters. If you don't own the software that generated the load file, you may want to ask for a comma-delimited (CSV) file instead, which at least you can open in Excel.
65
Meet & Confer
A meeting (or phone call) at the beginning of a case for lawyers to talk about discovery and try to reach agreement on preliminary matters like forms of production and dates for depositions. Required in federal court. Most often the meet & confer session is 'phoned-in' both literally and figuratively, to the detriment of everyone involved. Best if counsel prepare beforehand, talk with their clients about e-discovery and the evidence that’s likely to be sought, and come with a game plan.
66
Metadata
Least helpful definition, 'data about data.' More helpful definition, contextual information about computer files that helps explain how/when/where/why they were created. Metadata can also prove that a piece of a evidence 'is what it purports to be'--e.g., 'even though he denies it ladies and gentlemen, this email is in fact an email written by Mr. X on [insert date] from his home computer.' Metadata comes in two main categories, embedded metadata and system metadata. The handy thing about embedded metadata is that it travels with the file, so that if you copy the file to transfer media and give it to your opponent, it will still be there. In contrast, system metadata does not travel, and is therefore difficult to produce in discovery. Examples of system metadata are,directory paths, last-modified dates, and created dates. System metadata is often produced in load file (see above) that accompanies the discovery response.
67
Native
A file that is in the form in which it was originally created. If the file started its life by someone opening Microsoft Word, typing something, and then hitting 'save,' then the native file will have a '.doc' or '.docx' extension. The opposite of a native file is printing a '.doc' file to paper or to “virtual” paper--e.g., TIFF (see below) or PDF.
68
Review Platform
Software for examining electronic evidence--either your own or the other side's. Can be hosted in a 'cloud' environment--in which case expect to pay by GB. Alternatively, software that runs on one's desktop. Ranges from inexpensive to insanely expensive. More often the latter. We're trying to change this.
69
Preservation Demand
A letter or email to your adversary demanding that he or she keep evidence safe and prevent it from being destroyed. Sometimes critical to point to when seeking sanctions at a later date if the other side 'lost' some evidence. Preservation demands are often wildly overbroad, since the sender generally doesn't know what the receiver has and doesn't have?
70
PST File
A super handy file format for wrapping up huge numbers of emails and attachments in a way that preserves their ability to be searched. We like PSTs. Ask for them, often.
71
Redaction
Taking the privilege/confidential parts of a document and crossing them out.
72
Relational Database
The thing that runs your bank account, your email account, your smartphone app, your Facebook account, your doctor's medical records system, and generally everything else in the world, including many of the things that are valuable in e-discovery. Learning a bit about them and their lingo--highly recommended.
73
Sources
The places where electronic evidence lives--computer disks, smart phones, thumb drives, Dropbox. Custodians have been known to have them.
74
TIFF Images
A TIFF is an image file, like a JPEG, PNG, or GIF. Native files are converted to TIFF images and produced as such, with a load file.
