Extract from Jim Gill’s article “The eDiscovery Process for Collaboration Data and SaaS Platforms”
The eDiscovery Reference Model (EDRM) has been a long-established visualization of the eDiscovery process once litigation is anticipated.
At that point, potential data custodians are identified, and a legal hold notice is sent, most often by an organization’s in-house legal team, letting custodians know not to destroy ESI.
Then that data must be preserved, which with today’s cloud-based SaaS platforms and communications channels, usually means the organization’s IT department will be involved. However, with new eDiscovery tools, data can now be preserved-in-place (PIP), meaning it is locked down at its source in a way that prevents anyone from deleting or spoliating relevant data.
From here, data is collected, after which a number of Early Case Assessment (ECA) tools – which include advanced search, analytics, and artificial intelligence – can be applied to the dataset, allowing legal teams to gain early insights into case evidence and begin the process of culling data which isn’t relevant to the matter at hand.
It’s at this point in the process when in-house legal teams usually send the collected and culled data to outside counsel or a legal service provider for processing and review. However, not just any export format will do: it needs to be a format that puts the collected data into a usable form for review, such as a PDF. After review, all documents included in discovery will be produced according to Department of Justice guidelines.
