E-Discovery
Discovery is the term used for the initial phase of litigation in which the parties in a dispute are
required to provide each other relevant information and records, along with all other evidence related to
the case. E-discovery simply refers to discovery of electronically stored information. E-discovery process
includes the identification, collection, preservation, processing, review, analysis, production, and presentation of electronically stored information.
Historically, e-discovery has been focused on unstructured data such as email, instant messages,
documents, spreadsheets, html pages, and images, as the information contained in these files can be easily
reviewed and understood by lawyers. Structured data is often shied away from for two reasons: (1) the complexity and multiplicity of the database systems and (2) structured data is virtually meaningless
without specialized reporting and analytical tools. Therefore, more often than not, structured data is
completely ignored or inordinate amounts of effort and cost are inefficiently expended on data production
with little benefit.