The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/116777
features Nicole Blake is a Litigation Services 44 And the Data Went KABOOM by Nicole Blake 50 To Govern Is To Tame by David Rohde 56 Avoid Blind Spots with Automated Compliance Monitoring by Dave Beck 60 Master of Your Domain: How Master Data Management Improves Firm Performance by Thad Jampol and Norm Mullock 66 Keeping Big Data Secure by Phil Weldon 72 The Value of Big Data to Law Firms by Nick Patience 74 Predictable Filing: Better Email Management Through Intelligent Content Analysis by David Pilling Specialist with Lathrop & Gage LLP. She has been in the information technology field for 15 years, with experience on both the technical and legal sides of the business. Nicole provides technical and ESI support for various aspects of litigation, from designing, implementing and maintaining litigation databases to creating custom programs and scripts. She also provides support for litigation hardware and software, coordinating program updates, upgrades and customizations. Nicole can be contacted at nblake@lathropgage.com. BY O NIC L LA EB KE OF LAT HR OP E AG &G Around 20 years ago, Microsoft released Windows 3.1. Cellphones were large and clunky, and very few people even carried them. Email and browsers hadn't made an appearance yet. Total worldwide data wasn't even at 50 terabytes. Yet look at us today. Many of us deal with terabytes of data on a daily basis. LLP The amount of data in existence is increasing all the time, nonstop. The "big data" explosion has us working with huge, head-spinning amounts of data that are simply too big to be handled reasonably by most current technologies, which means most of us cannot work with and manage big data effectively. DATA OF ALL TYPES AND SIZES If you look on the Web for a definition of data, you will find many variations. Data are a collection of facts, such as values and measurements. Data can be words or numbers, measurements, observations or descriptions of things. Simply put, data are pieces of information that have been converted to a digital form; they can be input, processed, stored and output by a computer. The main categories of data include structured, unstructured and semistructured: • Structured Data are typically found and contained in databases, following a defined metadata structure. • Unstructured Data follow no specific structure and can be found in pictures, email messages, reports and other similar file types. Your Facebook posts are another example of unstructured data. The majority of data in today's data explosion is unstructured data. ILLUSTRATION BY THOMAS BOUCHER, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 44 Peer to Peer • Semistructured Data are somewhere in the middle, having the metadata of structured data and not being contained in databases like unstructured data. Peer to Peer 45