Electronic discovery, or "e-discovery", refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with information in electronic format also referred to as Electronically Stored Information "ESI". In this context, electronic form is the representation of information as binary numbers. Electronic information is different from paper information because of its intangible form, volume, transience, and persistence. Also, electronic information is usually accompanied by metadata, which is never present in paper information unless manually coded (See below). Metadata is the data about the data, or the information that is kept about the electronic files ie who the author was, when the file was created etc. It is descriptive information that can not be changed unless spoliation occurs. Electronic discovery poses new challenges and opportunities for attorneys, their clients, technical advisors, and the courts, as electronic information is collected, reviewed and produced. Electronic discovery is the subject of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which are effective December 1, 2006.1 shows the changes, the complete Rules, where in particular rules 16 and 26 are of interest to electronic discovery, are at 2

Examples of the types of data included in e-discovery are e-mail, instant messaging chats, documents (such as MS Office or OpenOffice files), accounting databases, CAD/CAM files, Web sites, and any other electronically-stored information which could be relevant evidence in a law suit. Also included in e-discovery is "raw data" which Forensic Investigators can review for hidden evidence. The original file format is known as the "native" format. Litigators may review material from e-discovery in one of several formats: printed paper, "native file," or as TIFF images. If the native file, for example a Microsoft Word document, contains 10 pages, then an electronic discovery vendor will convert it into 10 TIFF images for use in a discovery review database. Documents that are produced are numbered using Bates numbering.

Individuals working in the field of electronic discovery commonly refer to the field as Litigation Support.

Document Coding

To better organize and manage their documents, lawyers and paralegals would code their documents for specific fields, and load this information into a database to easily classify and reference documents during review. Information captured from these documents, to be inserted into a database would include "to", "from", "document type (i.e. letter, memo, brief, or other)", "document date" and others. Historically, this process was performed either by the legal team or outside vendors for most of the documents in the case. As 'documents' changed from being paper based to electronically stored information, this process was largely replaced by "processing" of electronic files. Coding of paper documents, however, will not go away until the pen is completely replaced by the computer.