Are You Doing Email eDiscovery Wrong? 6 Perks Your Small Law Firm Might Be Missing Out On

21 December 2018 by Anith Mathai eDiscovery small-law-firm email

Takeaway: With the right eDiscovery software, you’ll (1) Never miss crucial information, (2) Never repeat a search, (3) Protect bonus email info, (4) Stay organized, (5) Store as many emails as you want, (6) Upload files easily

Email eDiscovery is almost impossible without the right software.

For example, Outlook is too slow and it doesn’t let you tag, redact, and produce emails. Google Desktop can help you search files, emails, and attachments. But its search options are limited. Microsoft Exchange Server can handle basic eDiscovery. But it’s not designed to work with PST files (we’ll discuss these in a bit). DtSearch Desktop has a powerful search feature. But it uses command line syntax. Which means you need a background in something like MS-DOS.

So, what are the perks of having the right email eDiscovery software?

Here’s what happens when you choose a next-generation email eDiscovery application like GoldFynch.

1. You’ll never miss crucial information.

To build a case, you’re going to need to search your email. And email applications like Outlook can search for keywords in the body of your email. But they don’t search email attachments like Word files and PDFs. So, it’s easy to overlook them – even when they have critical information. In contrast, GoldFynch processes attachments and makes their content searchable. So, with a single search, you can find keywords, dates, etc., in both the email body as well as the attachments.

Basic keyword searches are easy to understand. You type a keyword into the search bar and hit enter. ‘Advanced’ searches are more complicated. With an advanced search, you use many keywords to give your software a complex command. Like, ‘Find all emails from John Anderson to Sally Nedry about a severance package, but not those from 2015.’ Here, you’re connecting the keywords ‘John Anderson,’ ‘Sally Nedry,’ ‘severance package,’ and ‘2015.’ And you’re doing it through a complex equation. You’ll then need to test your search on small samples of data and keep tweaking it till it starts pulling up more relevant files than irrelevant ones. All this takes time. But luckily, GoldFynch lets you save your advanced searches – and even share them with your team. So, you’ll never have to rebuild that search!

3. You’ll be able to protect bonus email info.

When you send or receive an email, your email application ‘stamps’ it with a bunch of information. Things like who created it, when it was created, when it was sent/received, etc. This ‘data about data’ (i.e., metadata) is a digital footprint which tracks the history of the email. So, for example, when you want to find an email your client sent to a colleague last January, your software scans the ‘date’ metadata field of all your emails. Metadata is valuable and it can help make or break your case. But it’s also fragile. Even a simple thing like forwarding an email modifies its metadata. GoldFynch protects your email metadata, which means lots of this ‘bonus’ information to help you win your cases. Learn more about metadata.

4. You’ll stay organized.

GoldFynch lets you:

  • Tag files. Think of a tag as a stamp or a sticky note on a file. It provides an additional method to categorize or call attention to individual documents or groups of files. But it doesn’t affect the way the file is used in the GoldFynch app. You can name the tags yourself, and there’s no limit to the number of tags you can create. With bulk tagging, you tick the boxes next to multiple emails and tag them all at the same time. It’s simple and easy.
  • Bates-stamp emails. Traditional email applications don’t let you do this. And that’s a problem. But with GoldFynch, Bates-stamping is quick, easy and automatic. And you do it with a single click.
  • Share productions safely. Choose who gets access to your productions. And if you share the production with the wrong person by mistake, you can click a ‘revoke’ button which will invalidate the link you shared. Learn more about how to share productions in GoldFynch.

5. You’ll be able to store as many emails as you want

GoldFynch gives you unlimited storage space. Email applications like Outlook download your email onto your computer. This makes it easy to read them at your leisure. But it limits you to the size of your hard drive. In contrast, GoldFynch is in the Cloud. Which means unlimited storage space. What’s the Cloud? Well, it’s thousands of interconnected servers (high-performance computers) that work together to give you storage space and processing power. And the more people there are in the Cloud, the less the costs for each. That’s the beauty of cloud economics. So you get cheap, unlimited storage and computing power. Learn more about cloud computing.

6. You’ll be able to upload files easily

Just drag-and-drop them into the GoldFynch browser. It’s the exact same way you’d move files from one folder to another, in Windows. GoldFynch even lets you import emails from other applications:

GoldFynch does more than just email-eDiscovery.

It’s a complete eDiscovery package and has some cool features for small law firms like yours.

  • Pay just $27 per month for a basic 3 GB case. That’s far less–every month–than the nearest comparable software. And hundreds of dollars less than many others. GoldFynch’s pricing is transparent and readily available on the website.
  • It’s a flat, prorated rate. So it’s simple to budget for it. With legacy software, the billing is complicated and opaque, and your bill changes depending on how much data you use.
  • GoldFynch scales from small to large, since it’s in the Cloud. So, choose from a range of case sizes (3 GB to 150 GB, and more) and don’t waste money on space you don’t need. Plus, you don’t need to pay to ‘unlock’ premium features. You’ll have the full power of GoldFynch even with a starter case.
  • It takes just minutes to get going. It runs in the Cloud, so you use it through your web browser (Google Chrome recommended). No installation. No sales calls or emails. Plus, you get a free, fully-functional trial case (0.5 GB of data and processing cap of 1 GB), without adding a credit card.
  • You get the best technical support. It’s designed, developed and run by the same team. So, the technical support isn’t outsourced. Which means prompt and reliable service.

Want to find out more?

For more about eDiscovery for small law firms, check out these articles.