FAQs
Why is Computer Based Document Management Important?
COMPLIANCE and VOLUME! Recent legislations have brought document management compliance techniques and practices into the limelight for corporate and transactional lawyers. But for the typical litigation team, it is the rapidly expanding volume of documents that poses the greatest concern in providing quality litigation services to clients. Here are just some of the issues created by the increased volume in documents:
Computers have made it easier than ever to create documents. The volume of documents being created on a daily basis using word processing, spreadsheets and e-mail is staggering and increasing exponentially each year. Litigation teams need to review their client's proposed response to document requests in addition to responses from opposing counsel. Although computer technology has caused this huge increase in document volume, computer technology also holds the promise of helping litigation teams to store, search and categorize documents more efficiently. Law firms using the technology available have a competitive advantage over those law firms not using such techniques. It should also be noted that failure to use available technology could be argued as a failure to exercise ordinary care in providing legal services-an element of a malpractice claim.
What is Document Imaging and Scanning?
Document Imaging and/or scanning refer to the process of making a digital photocopy from paper-based documents. The only difference between a traditional paper photocopy and an image is the way it is stored. Images are stored on digital media such as hard drives, CDs and DVD. Photocopies are stored on paper. For litigation support purposes, the terms "imaging" and "scanning" mean the same thing, and these terms can be used interchangeably.
What is OCR?
OCR or Optical Character Recognition is a process whereby an image file (which is inherently not searchable) is used to create a parallel text file, which is searchable (or editable). The accuracy of the text file resulting from this process is entirely dependent on the quality of the original. Generally, if you can see white space between the letters in the original, the OCR software will be able to discern the letters with a high degree of accuracy.
What is a Database?
A Database is a collection of records. A record is one complete set of fields. A field is a single piece of information about a document. A telephone book is a database. It contains a list of records, each of which consists of three fields: name, address, and telephone number. Concordance and Summation are databases specifically designed for litigation support.
What is a Field?
A field is a single piece of information about a document in the database. The following are examples of fields in a typical litigation support database:
- Begin Bates
- End Bates
- Document Date
- Document Type
- Author
- Recipient
- Document Source
- Document Characteristics
What is Coding?
Since images are not searchable unless we attach some searchable information, finding relevant documents from an image collection is not much more efficient than looking through boxes of paper. Coding is the process whereby a human looks at an image of a document and type information in the fields of the case database. The term "auto-coding" refers to a software process of using OCR to populate fields in a database. This technology is improving, and is appropriate for certain document collections where time or budget constraints apply.
Why are electronic documents important?
It is estimated that over 70 per cent of all corporate data exists solely in electronic formats. This is due in large part to the growing custom of e-mailing documents as e-mail attachments. Many of these e-mails and attachments are never printed to paper and thus exist solely in electronic form. In order to conduct comprehensive discovery, this information needs to be reviewed. Otherwise, over 70 per cent of all potential evidence may be left un-examined. Reliable can help you to develop an effective and cost efficient plan to deal with both paper based and electronic documents. No two cases are the same and each case demands its own document management approach.
What is Metadata?
Metadata is frequently described as data about data. An image or paper document does not provide you with significant information about its history. The Metadata in an electronic document, however, can provide valuable information about a document's history such as its author, creation date and modification date.
The following are examples of Metadata found in a typical Word document:
- Author's name/initials
- Author's company/organization name
- Server name on which the document is stored
- File properties/summary information
- Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects
- Previous author's names and initials
- Document version, editing time & revision information
