Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | L I T I G A T I O N A N D P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T 57 C O N Q U E R I N G E M A I L I N E D I S C O V E R Y : H O W D A T A A N A L Y T I C S A R E C H A N G I N G T H E G A M E metadata filtering—to include a variety of text and data relationship analytics. Although the result can be smaller datasets to review, volumes still remain challenging. That's why review teams have come to rely upon the increased sophistication of review tools to tackle the still voluminous datasets that usually plague large litigations and investigations. Email threading: A review breakthrough Although there is much conversation around legal tech watering holes on topics related to AI and technolo-assisted review (TAR), a chat with someone who is knee-deep in document review every day will likely reveal that, more than "continuous active learning" workflows or complex data visualizations for clustering, the analytics used to enable "email threading" to organize review is one of the most practical and commonly used tools available for reducing review volumes and associated costs. Email threading is an analytics process that interprets characteristics about email collections from the body of emails, specifically email headers, and parses out the complex relationships among them. We've all lived it: the single email to an individual or group that is replied to and forwarded repeatedly, morphing as it goes along with all or part or none of the original content, with the same or a different subject line and a variety of recipients. While each of these emails lives as an individual item in a collection, ticking ever upward the number of items to review, email threading enables related emails to be grouped together in a more logical framework. This leads to a number of review efficiencies, which are significantly enhanced when the email relationships are presented to the reviewer as a thread visualization, mapped out as an interactive visual depiction of a conversation on their review screen. Thread visualization: Getting the picture The concept of thread visualization is to graphically depict the often complex life of an email thread with a goal of helping to understand and navigate the substance of the communications stored within. Such visualizations have myriad benefits; integrated into a review application, they enable the reviewer to navigate to specific emails or email branches in order to code for relevance and/or privilege and be targeted in applying an assessment. But further, the visual contours of branching and forwarding can be instructive to the case team when considering the substance of the matter itself. Digging into conversation threads can provide valuable insight into the evolution of a discussion and the activities, timelines and relationships among various parties. Who spoke to whom, when, with who else included in (or excluded or removed from) the conversation? Did the content or tone change when the thread included the top executive as opposed to when it didn't? Or when the communication was internal as opposed to including external participants? Such communications viewed as single, unrelated documents would be bereft of the meaning gained when viewing them in their original context. Thread visualization techniques are becoming increasingly useful and differentiating tools within analytics software applications. In fact, the graphical T H R E A D V I S U A L I Z AT I O N

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