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: E-Discovery In the Trenches

Meta-Four

By Jerry Bui

For all practical intents and purposes, there are four major types of Metadata that we're concerned with in the review, analysis & production phases of the E-Discovery lifecycle:

(1) Document Metadata
(2) Container Metadata
(3) Tagging Metadata
(4) Workflow Metadata

Document Metadata - This is the traditional stuff that you're accustomed with when trying to ascertain the Author, Create Date, Modified Date, Last Printed Date, etc. This is also referred to as embedded metadata.

Container Metadata - Vendors should be populating this metadata type with custodian & source information, as well as culling parameters if applicable. Ideally, there should be several fields allocated to cover the breadth of container information so that a linking system can reflect how specific batches of data were extracted and processed. Sidenote: The Socha-Gelbmann team have initiated an industry-wide XML initiative to standardize all the data fields in party-to-party transmittals.

Tagging Metadata - All the relevance calls, issue codes, redaction reasons, and privilege reasons comprise this category of metadata.

Workflow Metadata - This oft overlooked set of tags helps organize the workflow steps in your review platform. "First Tier Review complete", "Second Tier Review Complete", "Needs Further Discussion" and other similar tags control how work is distributed for review amongst your team members. There should also be a tag that determines the ultimate Production status of a document after it has traversed all the various tiers of control. A lot of this gets lumped in as "Issue Codes", but it can be more accurately described as "workflow metadata".

Full post as published by E-Discovery In the Trenches on April 23, 2007 (boomark / email).