By Alicia Penn, Luzevelia Morales and Tisha Davis

When the government produces discovery to defense teams, it is not always in a user-friendly way. Sometimes the problem is volume—there are so many separate files that it would take decades to lay eyes on all of them. The problem could be organization (or, rather, the apparent lack of it)—the folder structure is cumbersome and/or illogical. Naming convention can be a non-starter—there is an index, but the filenames give you no clue about the file contents.

One answer is to use a review platform. A review platform is software that allows you to view a variety of document types in a single place without having to go through nested folders. Other review platform functions include the ability to tag documents, run text-based searches, create notes, and organize documents. Review platforms are particularly helpful in email-heavy cases because they show the path of an email and any attachments. They also can facilitate collaboration.

A review platform is best used for text-searchable document files such as:

• scanned paper
• image files, PDF files
• MS Office files, other word processing or text-based file formats, and emails

Review platforms provide minimal, if any, benefit to non-document file types such as:

• video files: surveillance / body / dash / pole camera video
• audio files: jail calls and wiretap audio
• cell phone reports–UFDR, .HTML, .XML, or .PDF reports with hyperlinks to related items
• social media subpoena returns: reports in .HTML or .CSV format
• computer forensic images and reports: .E01 or reports in an .HTML format, and other “database” or “system” files: Quickbooks, .exe

Audio and video files contain minimal searchable text and the text-based search function of review platforms cannot search sound or video.  Social media returns or cell or computer extractions, although they have searchable text, also have their own specialized software that is best tuned to their review. Putting these non-document files in a platform can decrease efficiency in processing and increase the cost of hosting the data.  

The National Litigation Support Team (NLST) contracts with two different online eDiscovery software companies, Casepoint and Everlaw. These contracts can be leveraged for certain appointed cases depending on availability and benefit. We also provide training on the use of IPRO Eclipse SE Publish, a free document review platform increasingly used by the government to distribute discovery to the defense. The rest of this post will provide a general overview of Eclipse, Casepoint, and Everlaw and considerations for each.

Eclipse

The government frequently produces discovery using a program called IPRO Eclipse SE (Eclipse). Eclipse is a document review platform that requires a paid subscription. It is installed locally on your computer or a drive (as opposed to online). It is Windows only. When you get discovery produced out of Eclipse, you do not get access to the entire Eclipse program and all its capabilities. Instead, you get access to a free, limited copy of the program—IPRO Eclipse SE Publish (Eclipse Publish). (Think of this as the difference between Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader).

You will know you’ve received Eclipse Publish because your discovery will look similar to this:

The football-ish icon is the Eclipse Publish case, and your discovery can be viewed, searched, organized, and tagged within it. It is not online, but it will let you search your discovery without going through nested subfolders. If you have an Eclipse Publish case, it might be enough to meet your immediate case needs. For training on how to use Eclipse Publish (there are many tips and tricks that make review less painful) please contact NLST (Kelly_Scribner@fd.org) to set up an online video meeting to view your discovery.

When you first open an Eclipse Publish case by clicking on the .exe file, it will probably look like this:

NLST can show you how to modify Eclipse Publish to make it easier to search, review, and organize, such as by prioritizing review panes, changing the columns and grid size, understanding the viewing pane, searching, and tallying. After modifying Eclipse Publish, the production would look more like this, with the document viewer on a different screen if you have one:

Casepoint

Casepoint is an online document review platform. It looks like this:

If you contract with Casepoint, you send them your discovery and they upload it to their platform. All your discovery is hosted online, allowing you to search, filter, mark, and organize it there.  You can review documents and extract facts:

You can tag documents of interest, organize files into issue folders, and take notes:

Because it lives online and only requires an internet connection instead of a presence on your computer, it is great for collaboration and is also handy if you are a Mac user. Casepoint provides its own training and helpdesk.

Platforms like Casepoint are particulary suited for viewing email—the program will allow you to see the trajectory of an email thread—who responds, who forwards the email, etc.—plus attachments to emails, as opposed to trying to find and review these things as separate unlinked files.

If using Casepoint under NLST’s national contract, there is no cost to court-appointed counsel. In multidefendant cases, the retained counsel of a codefendant can opt to be charged a pro-rata share in exchange for being able to use the same platform as appointed counsel. This means the discovery (assuming it is the same for everyone) only has to be uploaded once, but each team will get access to their own walled-off workspaces.

Everlaw

Everlaw is a more recent addition to NLST’s national contracts. Everlaw, like Casepoint, is another online review platform. It will let you organize your discovery in folders.

There is a document pane that will let you view every document:

And you can search across productions and view results in a viewer:

There is a reviewer pane that will let you notate and mark documents.

Everlaw works well as a collaborative review platform or tool for solo users. It can be used to assign certain discovery to certain people for review, and to track any actual review. Like Casepoint, it also allows email threading, which lets viewers see the volume and direction of communication between parties, such as reply-to, reply-all, and forwarded emails in an email chain, along with the attachments.

For training on IPRO Eclipse SE or Eclipse Publish, or to learn more about Casepoint and Everlaw, please contact NLST via Kelly_Scribner@fd.org. We will set up an online meeting to screenshare and view discovery, and figure out whether a platform is the best way to manage your discovery and if so, which one makes the most sense for your case.