Ariyah Mandel: Best Practices for Handling Special Files in eDiscovery: Short Message Data

Extract from Ariyah Mandel’s article “Best Practices for Handling Special Files in eDiscovery: Short Message Data”

Over the years, eDiscovery technology and best practices have focused on improving the processing of standard documents like word processing files, emails and spreadsheets. “Special” or different files—like audio/video, texts in foreign languages, short message data and, more recently, proprietary applications—have been left behind, slowing the processing and reviewing of these files and thus entire eDiscovery projects.

More recently, specialized technology has been developed and improved to handle these files, as have workflows to take advantage of the platforms available. In this article, let’s continue the conversation from Part 2: Foreign Language Documents, and take a closer look at short message data.

The Challenges of Short Message Data

Short message data in eDiscovery just 10 years ago was primarily cell phone data, which is still somewhat difficult to gather today. With alternatives for in-person and remote collection, the challenge has become simpler, but new types of short message data, such as those from Microsoft Teams discussions, Slack messages, WhatsApp messages and more, are now appearing in eDiscovery.

These short message data formats also need to be gathered and processed. What to do with all this data once it has been collected and how to limit the amount of data to save time and money on each case have not developed as swiftly as the technology itself.

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