{"id":516143,"date":"2024-06-05T17:08:37","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T21:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commvault.com\/?post_type=cmv_glossary&p=516143"},"modified":"2024-06-05T17:08:38","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T21:08:38","slug":"ediscovery","status":"publish","type":"cmv_glossary","link":"https:\/\/www.commvault.com\/glossary-library\/ediscovery","title":{"rendered":"eDiscovery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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eDiscovery Definition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Electronic Discovery (eDiscovery) is the process of finding and collecting electronically stored information (or ESI) \u2013 typically for lawsuits, investigation, or legal purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discovery process is the opening phase for litigation proceedings, where parties involved are required to provide all information and data that\u2019s relevant to the case. Unfortunately, gathering this information is not as easy as it sounds. Historically, eDiscovery involved the use of paper documents, presenting physical evidence, and interviewing witnesses.

However, most data is now electronically stored information (ESI), living it various computers, systems, and environments. ESI\u2019s non-persistent, intangible nature has created new discovery challenges \u2013 as locating this data is no longer a physical process. A widely recognized industry-term, eDiscovery refers to the virtual discovery process of ESI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is eDiscovery?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

eDiscovery is the legal process of finding relevant ESI needed for legal, regulatory, and compliance purposes. eDiscovery extends to both the physical data, as well as the \u201craw data\u201d and \u201cmetadata\u201d associated with both structured and unstructured data<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most organizations, the eDiscovery process involves searching through vast amounts of electronic information, including email, documents, databases, image files, instant messages, chats and more. This data lives in laptops, file repositories, SaaS applications, and popular collaborative workspaces \u2013 creating a vast digital footprint and a number of non-physical environments to mine for critical, time-sensitive data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once ESI is identified as being potentially relevant information for litigation or regulatory purposed, it must be preserved in a sharable format.  Preserving data for legal purposes not only ensures that sensitive information cannot be altered, deleted, erased or tampered with \u2014but a failure to do so can breach eDiscovery compliance protocols and can have severe consequences, including fines and possible criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is the eDiscovery process and how does it work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To help organizations successfully navigate the process, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model or EDRM was created to serve as an overarching framework. It has nine distinct stages. These stages are not always a linear progression from one to the other, but a good eDiscovery process<\/a> should include all of them. Several of the stages can (and often should) happen at the same time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n