The ESI Race Heats Up

e-Mail, as a relatively new type of information medium, has always been incredibly valuable in a discovery context. It has a number of relatively unique attributes that make it almost singularly useful in establishing timelines and the mission-critical important litigation concept of “who knew what, when?”. This is because e-mail is laden with tons of useful metadata (data about data) such as “to/from” information, sent/received times, cc/bcc information, read receipts, forwarding information, etc. All of this metadata is then organized in a structured database of sorts (Outlook, most commonly) that easily permits custodian-level analysis, which is often the cornerstone of modern e-discovery efforts. In response to this treasure trove of information, numerous companies have created software applications to better harness the power of e-mail by reconstructing e-mail threads, adding in ways to detect duplicates/near duplicates and identifying missing participants to e-mail conversations and the like.