Legal professionals can use eDiscovery software to process, review, tag, and produce electronic documents as part of a lawsuit or investigation. The right software can assist attorneys in discovering valuable information about a matter while lowering costs, expediting resolutions, and mitigating risks.
The legal procedures governing the right to obtain and the obligation to produce non-privileged matter relevant to any party's claims or defenses in litigation is known as discovery. eDiscovery refers to electronically stored information (ESI), including emails, computer files, and databases.
eDiscovery software is also known as document review software. It assists legal professionals in organizing electronic documents for discovery and investigations. These tools automate essential discovery steps such as file indexing, data ingestion, virus scanning, and OCRing, preparing documents to be produced and reviewed.
After loading data into a platform, legal teams can begin reviewing it, creating searches to find documents, organizing information by metadata fields such as document author or creation date, and tagging files as non-responsive, responsive, by subject or legal element, and so on. Discovery software can also significantly reduce the number of documents that require in-person review by enabling teams to quickly screen out extraneous files, such as duplicate files and information outside the scope of the evaluation, allowing them to focus on the most critical data. After data has been culled, reviewed, and tagged, discovery software can automatically Bates stamp documents, apply redactions, and generate productions that can be securely shared with others.
Cloud-based discovery software has the added benefit of allowing users to upload, review, and produce documents online, eliminating the delays, costs, and frustrations associated with traditional eDiscovery methods such as manual review, third-party vendors, or legacy software.
Some essential features of any good eDiscovery software are search filtering, document tagging, redacting, batching, and Bates Numbering/Stamping.
Learn more in-depth about document reviewing.
Benefits of eDiscovery Software:
- Serving Your Clients' Interests: Electronic discovery skills can assist you in uncovering valuable evidence in a time and cost-efficient manner.
- Meeting Your Ethical Obligations: Competent and diligent representation necessitates a working knowledge of eDiscovery, and courts are becoming increasingly critical of inefficient and manual processes.
- Time and Money Savings: When you charge by the hour, time is money. Powerful discovery software enables you to do more work more efficiently and client-friendly.
- Avoiding Sanctions for eDiscovery: When discovery is made incorrectly, sanctions may be imposed—parties who do not understand how to handle ESI risk costly and potentially case-dispositive sanctions.
You can read more about the best eDiscovery software in the market.
