Imagine being a reviewer working on a case with multiple Custodians. There were constant emails and interaction amongst the Custodians so lots of records within the collection are similar or exactly the same. As a reviewer, it would be nice to have a tool that could help determine these records so one would not have to read the same record multiple times. Wish granted! LexisNexis LAW PreDiscovery has many offerings that help streamline this process such as Deduplication, Near Deduplication and Email Threading.
Of all the offerings, deduplication is the most common. It can be performed in three different stages within a particular case. It can be completed during ingestion, after import or across multiple cases within the Intercase-Deduplication Utility. This feature has been known to reduce reviewer time significantly.
The technology LAW PreDiscovery uses to determine if a record is unique or a duplicate file depends on the type of file (loose electronic file or mail item). Electronic files are flagged duplicates if their respective hash value matches. As for emails, LAW’s algorithm consists of 7 fields. These fields are BCC, Body, CC, From, IntMsgID, Email_Subject, To and AttachmentName or AttachmentContentHash. If an email happens to have an attachment, the application will dedupe on the entire parent/attachment relationship.
As collections are growing bigger and bigger every day, every minute saved from not having to review the same document leads to cost savings, higher reviewer velocity and productivity. This is just one avenue that the program offers, picture exploring other features such as Near Deduplication and Email Threading too!