We hope you enjoy this valuable post from our sister company Key-Discovery that focuses on Chain of Custody Forms (CoC), a unique trail of all evidence provided to us that ensures your data is organized, and processed in a timely manner.
Anyone that has dealt with computers has overestimated their capabilities. In fact, many don’t realize that general electronics wouldn’t work unless we use them with some sort of direction. In the eDiscovery business, we hear about this issue daily.
Before submitting data, clients need to make sure that their information is organized and to review it because more than likely, their eDiscovery provider will ask a question or two. By having this information upfront, you’ll not only save time and money but your project manager will be able to kick off your project without any delay. Thankfully, with KEY Discovery, we’ve refined this process even more by including our Chain of Custody Form (CoC), which creates a trail of all evidence provided to us.
Keeping Names Organized
A CoC is an eDiscovery vendor’s best friend. The vendors usually organize their projects by client, and then by matter name, which are both necessary on a CoC. Many law firms have several attorneys and multiple matters going on at one time. It is critical that your discovery provider keep this information organized to ensure all data ends up where it is supposed to be. KEY Discovery will take the time to reorganize this information if need be. It is better to organize up front on a project than to deal with problems later.
Getting Custodian Information
No, it’s not that custodian. Within law, the custodian refers to the person or source from where the data originated. A custodian’s information is necessary on a CoC because not only is it used for identification, but it’s also utilized during processing and deduplication. By providing accurate information in a timely manner, the process will run more smoothly after processing is complete and come doc review time.
Data Sources & Data Type
After organizing clients and matter names, knowing the source of the data and the data types are both very important. Providers may not be able to read your mind, which means it’s best to have your discovery partner involved early in the process. This will give you and the provider 100% confidence that they have all data sources and an understanding of the different types of data. Emails, loose native files and structured data, and many others need to be sorted through and processed, so it’s better for your provider to know early on what to expect.
In summary, COC and organization of data will ensure your data is organized, processed in a timely manner and you will be reviewing in no-time! The more organized you and your discovery partner are, the less back and forth there will be to get your project off and running.
This article was originally posted on our sister site KEY-Discovery, a litigation support for attorneys company based in Boston. If you work for a law firm or are in a corporate law department and are in need of eDiscovery consulting and project management then please contact us.
