Objective Coding:
“Who, What, When” will help you figure out “Where and How”
One definition of the word objective I found online is:
“uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices; presented factually”.
This is accurate when it comes to the objective coding of documents in the not so objective world of litigation. While you may believe that having OCR for .pdfs or associated text for .tiffs gives you the searching capabilities that you need, having documents objectively coded will really allow you to refine those searches and hone in on the specific documents you are looking for.
OCR and associated text allows you to search for keywords through the entire text of the document, whereas objective coding allows you to choose specific fields where the name, word or date you are looking for exists. You also are allowed to create a list of document types (i.e. Email, Financial Record, Police Report, Memo, etc.) specific to your case so that you can identify a specific subset of documents for review. You can also combine information found in different fields to even further refine your search.
The standard objective coding fields are:
- Author
- Recipient
- Copyee
- Date
- Title
- Document Type
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For example:
Your search results for a document authored by “John Smith” on “January 1, 2010” would differ tremendously depending on whether you used OCR or objective coding to run your search.
If you only used OCR for your search, you would find every single document that not only was authored by “John Smith” but in which his name appears. You would also retrieve every document in which “January 1, 2010″ appears, even if it was simply mentioned in the body of the text. This could result in an unwieldy subset of documents and not really help you identify the particular subset of documents you are looking for.
However, if your documents were objectively coded, you could simply search in the Author field for “John Smith” and in the Date field for “January 1, 2010” and find any documents that specifically fit that criteria.
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If you don’t get objective coding with your discovery, ask for it. Objective coding contains objective information – facts, not opinions or ideas about a document. Opposing counsel would not be revealing any information about their case, about their case strategy or about the strengths and weaknesses of the discovery by sharing any objective coding they have done. No privilege would be breached and no attorney work product would be turned over. Rather, a win-win situation is created when the cost of capturing factual information that will equally help both parties organize and review the discovery is shared.
Up next:
Part V: Running a Document Inventory