5 Game-Changing eDiscovery Tools to Format Your Productions

05 October 2019 by Anith Mathai eDiscovery software

Takeaway: Your eDiscovery case is only as good as the final ‘production,’ so make sure your software has these tools to format productions: (1) Tagging, (2) Redacting, (3) Bates numbering, (4) Custom page stamping, and (5) ‘Load file’ customizing.

What are the most important formatting tools for productions?

One of the common discussions around eDiscovery productions is whether to produce files in their native or non-native format. But the tools you use to format productions are just as crucial. Let’s explore the top 5 you’ll need and why they matter.

1. Tagging: To decide which files to produce

Think of a tag as a virtual post-it. With paper documents, you single out key pages by sticking post-its to them. With electronic documents like PDFs and emails, you add a tag. These tags also help you group related files and add them in bulk to a production. The better your eDiscovery software, the more tag-related production options you get, though. For example, with GoldFynch, you’ll use tags to select which files to produce. But you’ll also use them to select the ones you don’t want to produce. So, instead of individually removing documents from your production, you’ll save time by taking out entire batches with a single click.

2. Redacting: To remove sensitive information

Many of your documents will have privileged information that needs to be kept private. Redacting this text might seem straightforward: Just draw a black box over the sensitive paragraph, right? This is what your eDiscovery software does, but there’s a bit more to it. For example, it can’t just ‘place’ the redaction box over the sensitive text. It needs to anchor it securely. Otherwise, someone could just ‘cut and paste’ the box out of the document and read whatever is underneath. Also, are you using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on a PDF? If so, you’ll need to make sure that both the original PDF and the newly generated text file are redacted. And there are so many more examples of how a faulty redaction tool can lead to serious errors. So, test out your eDiscovery software thoroughly.

3. Bates numbering: To order the files in your production

When you’re dealing with thousands of pages of electronic documents, you’ll need a way to track all the data in your eDiscovery production. For example, you’ll want to be able to refer to a specific paragraph on a particular page quickly. And you’ll often be dealing with multiple productions, each of which has identical page numbers for different documents. The solution? Bates numbering (or Bates stamping). Here, your software automatically generates a sequence of unique numbers (or a mix of numbers and letters) for every file, page, or image in each of your productions. The best eDiscovery applications all offer Bates numbering and sidestep errors like skipping numbers accidentally or mistakenly not printing them.

4. Custom page stamping: To label and categorize pages

The top eDiscovery applications let you stamp your produced files with more than just a Bates number. For example, you could also stamp them with the tags we discussed in point 1 above. Or stamp them with new ‘custom’ tags. The key here is that you have a range of options. So, your software should be able to:

Stamp a page with multiple tags
Hide select tags when stamping
Change the names of the stamps
Change where the page is stamped
Change the order of the stamps.

5. ‘Load file’ customizing: To add context to ‘load files.’

When we read a PDF or an email, we’re taking in a lot of important information. But for a computer to make sense of this information, it needs to slot it into a specially-constructed database. One way of slotting it in is by using ‘load files.’ Newer databases don’t need load files, but older ones do. So they’ll pop up often, and your eDiscovery software needs to be able to add them to your productions. The best software also lets you customize load-file metadata using ‘Control Parameter’ profiles.

Want eDiscovery software with the production formatting tools that matter? Try GoldFynch.

It’s a next-generation eDiscovery application that prioritizes things that matter to small law firms. That’s why:

It costs just $27 a month for a 3 GB case: That’s much less–every month–than the nearest comparable software. And hundreds of dollars less than many others. With GoldFynch, you know what you’re paying for exactly – its pricing is simple and readily available on the website.
It’s easy to budget for. GoldFynch has a flat, prorated rate. With legacy software, your bill changes depending on how much data you use.
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.
It can handle even the largest cases. GoldFynch scales from small to large, since it’s in the Cloud. So, choose from a range of case sizes (3 GB to 100 GB, and more) and don’t waste money on space you don’t need.
You can access it from anywhere. And 24/7. All your files are backed up and secure in the Cloud. And you can monitor its servers here.
You won’t have to worry about technical stuff. It’s designed, developed, and run by the same team. So, its technical support isn’t outsourced. Which means you get prompt and reliable service.

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