When it comes to an industry as niche as eDiscovery and the law in general, there are acronyms and technical jargon around every corner. For those well-established in their legal careers, who witnessed the birth of many of these phrases, they are commonplace and undaunting. To those of us who are new to the industry, however, they are a one-way ticket to confusion and frantic googling.
Here at Altlaw, we are all about making the confusing world of legal technology easy and accessible, as you have seen through our Luddites Guide series. In the spirit of education and lending a helping hand, we have compiled all of our most-used technical phrases into this jargon buster. Hopefully, you can return to this blog whenever you come across a term you are unsure of and amaze your colleagues with your knowledge.
- Batching – Splitting a set of documents into manageable chunks, allowing the system to track progress.
- Boolean Search – The method of searching words or phrases within a single query using NOT/ OR/ AND operators.
- Child Document – A document or file which is embedded within, or attached to another document.
- Clustering - The act of grouping together documents with similar themes.
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- Objective Coding – This can be applied by anyone who is able to read the document. The process of manually determining the metadata of a document such as document type, title/subject, date, author, etc.
- Subjective Coding – Requires an understanding of the document and background of the project. The process of coding for Relevance, Privilege, Issues, etc.Coding – Inputting the information of a document into a field. There are two types of coding:
- Complex Case - Refers to a case in which the data is very difficult to come by and/or external legal help above and beyond that which is normally sought is required.
- Control Number – A unique identifier associated with a document.
- Custodian – The owner of a document or data set.
- Data Collection – The method of gathering electronic data in a forensically sound manner.
- Data Controller - A body that collects, holds, or processes information on others.
- Data Mapping – Identifying the locations, custodians, and data types that are potentially relevant to a case.
- Data Subject - The individual making the access request to retrieve the data held on them.
- De-duplication – Using hash values to identify multiple copies of the same document and excluding them.
- Document Family – A group of related items. The primary file in the group is the parent, with the associated files being the children. The most common example of a family would be an email and its attachments.
- Document Viewer - Interface used to display documents within a workspace. You can use the Viewer type tabs to toggle the loaded formats of documents, such as Native Viewer, Image Viewer, and Extracted Text Viewer. Using the Viewer, you can control the form of document that displays in the interface.
- Email Threading- Collecting and presenting documents that make up the same email/thread of emails together.
