With the average worker sending 40 emails per day — and receiving over 100 — it's no surprise that emails can play a key role in many cases worldwide. However, with the sheer number of emails in the average inbox, working through them can be a mammoth task.
When dealing with large amounts of emails, analytics tools are available to make a review more efficient. Here, we explore email threading in detail, look into the steps involved and how the tool helps a reviewer.
What is email threading?
Email threading involves collecting and presenting documents that make up the same email thread. The tool identifies email relationships, such as threads, the people involved in a discussion and attachments, grouping them so you can view them as one conversation.
The chronological arrangement of these individual messages allows reviewers to view discussions as one coherent conversation and analyse emails and attachments in sequential order.
Keeping emails in context and chronological order increases the chances of a more effective review. Understanding an email's importance or value can be easier once it's seen within the wider email thread.
Email threading in eDiscovery — How does it work?
Now that you know what email threading is, let's dive into how the eDiscovery process works for email threading, leading to improved reviews.
Analysing segments
The tool identifies documents that can be recognised as emails before looking at the individual messages, forwards, replies etc. within the emails. These are the separate segments of an email thread.
For example, a single reply to an email would contain the original email at the bottom of the thread. If this example was part of an eDiscovery collection, it would have two segments: the original email and the reply.
The algorithm then analyses segments and groups emails and attachments belonging to the same conversation. The email copy, send time and attachments are analysed to determine whether the email is unique or inclusive.
