Electronic discovery

Electronic discovery (or e-discovery, eDiscovery) refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with the exchange of information in electronic format (often referred to as Electronically Stored Informationor ESI).^[1] Usually (but not always) a digital forensics analysis is performed to recover evidence. A wider array of people are involved in eDiscovery (for example, forensic investigators, lawyers and IT managers) leading to problems with confusing terminology.^[1]

Data is identified as relevant by attorneys and placed on legal hold. Evidence is then extracted and analysed using digital forensic procedures, and is usually converted into PDF or TIFF form for use in court.^[1]

Electronic information is considered different from paper information because of its intangible form, volume, transience and persistence. Electronic information is usually accompanied by metadata that is not found in paper documents and that can play an important part as evidence (for example the date and time a document was written could be useful in a copyright case).