Native Processing

Performing native processing on a set of documents is an essential step in electronic discovery. Processing extracts an extensive set of metadata, along with each document’s full text, and a link to its native file. Emails are saved with their attachments, maintaining formatting and all parent / child relationships. With the information in a structured database, we are able to further filter and search the information and produce it to a format suitable for your review team.

Unless both parties agree otherwise, rule 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires that responsive documents are produced “as they are kept in the usual course of business”, i.e. their native format. Because it is impossible to bates label, redact or place designations on every native file formats, most court systems will only accept evidence produced in TIFF format.

Initially performing native processing not only minimizes the cost of conversion to an image format, it also enables your team to begin their review much sooner. Another important consideration is that not all ESI was meant to be paginated. For example, MS Excel files may contain formulas and/or links to other documents that cannot be displayed accurately in image format. Rather than converting your entire collection to an image format, reviewing natively and tagging only the responsive documents for conversion is without question the most economical route. Because of the sheer volume that today’s large cases can produce, this practice of hybrid image review is becoming more and more commonplace with law firms today.

Native Processing Services

Extraction of an extensive list of metadata fields
Extraction of full text from hundreds of file types
Automatic OCR of image formats
Native support for many current and legacy email systems
Extensive support for foreign language documents
Extraction of embedded objects from all MS Office types and PDF files
Extraction of archive contents
Extract and process attachments from e-mails
Maintaining multiple levels of parent / child relationships for emails and archives
Linking a read-only copy of the original document for review
Assign unique document identifiers for each native file

E-mail Programs

Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Oulook Express
Microsoft Exchange
IBM Lotus Notes
Eudora
Novell Groupwise
MBOX
UNIX Mail
CC:Mail
And many more*

*Other email types can typically be migrated into a manageable format.

End-User Applications

Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc
Source code
Text files
Image files (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, etc)
HTML
Compressed file formats (ZIP, RAR, TAR, etc)
And many more*

* Since new document formats are continually released, our system constantly adds support for new file types.