Extract from Zapproved’s article “Data Culling & Review: How to Cut Ediscovery Costs”
What is Ediscovery Data Processing and Culling?
During the ediscovery process, potentially relevant electronically stored information (ESI) is identified and collected. After this process, in-house teams need to turn that ESI into a usable format for the review stage of a matter. In addition, whether you’re conducting review in-house or leveraging outside counsel for higher complexity or higher risk matters, the overall collected data volume needs to be culled down to a usable size.
Narrowing down large data sets to the most relevant subset gives you more control over the scope of your review project, and therefore, your time and cost. Through the use of processing and culling, in-house legal teams can make informed decisions about whether to involve outside counsel/vendors or complete the review and production of the document set in-house.
Responding to your ediscovery obligations is all about effectively and efficiently culling your data to separate the wheat (non-duplicative and non-privileged documents that are responsive to a discovery request) from the chaff (everything else). Earlier culling — preserving in place, collecting only what is needed, and processing and culling internally — saves costs by limiting the amount of data for review. But you can continue your cost-saving measures throughout the review process as well by utilizing more efficient review protocols and document review software.
