What is eDiscovery?

Electronic discovery (eDiscovery) is the process of finding, collecting, preserving, and reviewing digital evidence in legal matters. It adapts traditional legal discovery concepts to a world where evidence often lives in emails, text messages, Slack threads, cloud storage, databases, and social media accounts.

Because electronically stored information (ESI) can be pivotal in civil and criminal cases, legal professionals must know how to handle it carefully and in compliance with legal standards. As the volume and complexity of digital data continues to grow, so do the challenges of managing it. Thankfully, legal tech solutions like Rev are transforming the process of eDiscovery. 

Here’s what legal professionals (and law students) should know. 

The EDRM Process

The process of eDiscovery is built on the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). Legal teams use this framework to manage how ESI moves from creation to presentation. Here are the 9 stages of the ERDM model:

1. Information Governance

This stage lays the groundwork for how data will be handled throughout a case. Law firms must have clear policies for proactively managing information. That means keeping it organized, secure, retrievable, and legally defensible throughout its lifecycle. By keeping data organized and routinely purging irrelevant information, you can avoid chaos later on.

2. Identification

The identification stage involves determining where data is stored, whether on servers, in the cloud, or on personal devices. This process usually involves case reviews and interviews to pinpoint the most important data relevant to the case, along with its location and ownership.

3. Preservation

Once critical data is identified, it must be protected to prevent “spoliation,” or any form of tampering or destruction, until it can be collected and reviewed. Legal teams issue legal holds, secure devices, and order suspension of data deletion schedules. Failure to follow directives can result in court sanctions. For instance, in one California case, a judge awarded Chrysler Group, LLC, reasonable attorneys’ fees and expanded the evidence the company could bring to trial after the plaintiff failed to preserve email evidence.

4. Collection

This is the data-gathering phase of eDiscovery, where teams collect devices and copy data from servers. As with physical evidence, the process of collecting data must be forensically sound to prevent compromise. With ESI, that includes preserving metadata (timestamps, author info, file paths, etc.), which provides important context about the data itself.

5. Processing

At this stage, data must be culled and organized. This may involve de-duplicating files, converting formats, filtering irrelevant data, and even creating investigative transcripts from audio files. After processing, all relevant files should be available in a single folder for attorney review.

6. Review

Now, the attorneys on the case must review the data at hand to determine whether it can be used. They’ll look at not only its relevance, but also any issues around privilege or confidentiality. Modern legal tools, which we’ll explore below, can expedite this time-consuming process.

7. Analysis

With relevant, useful data selected, the legal team can analyze it to begin making their case. Here, they’re looking for meaning, patterns, relationships, and implications for crafting the story they’ll tell in court. In some cases, they might find that the ESI at hand is insufficient for building an argument and may decide to seek a settlement out of court or drop the case entirely.

8. Production

Before trial or depositions, attorneys must deliver relevant documents in their final form to opposing counsel or regulatory bodies. All documents must meet legal requirements for format, accuracy, and completeness to be admitted in the case. These rules vary by jurisdiction and may include directives for metadata, demonstrating a proper chain of custody, and labeling.

9. Presentation

Finally, the legal team presents relevant ESI in hearings, depositions, or trials. In these contexts, ESI can be issued to solicit further information (as in a deposition) or to persuade a jury (as in a trial). Attorneys may share data in PowerPoint presentations, videos, exhibits, charts, and other forms.

Types of Electronically Stored Information

Nowadays, potential evidence isn’t locked in filing cabinets. It’s scattered in inboxes, messaging apps, cloud-based drives, and servers. ESI includes any data created, stored, or shared in digital form. Emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, instant messages, voicemail files, GPS logs — if it lives on a computer or mobile device, it may be discoverable.

That makes the task of electronic data discovery vast and far-reaching. Modern organizations generate tomes of unstructured data through tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Social media posts, digital photos, and even comments on collaborative documents can become critical pieces of evidence.  

And that’s not even touching on the structured data — information stored in databases and business systems like customer relationship management (CRM) apps — which often require specialized tools to extract and interpret.

A single lawsuit could involve thousands (or millions) of files spread across multiple devices and platforms, each of which must be collected, preserved, and reviewed without altering its integrity. That’s why legal teams increasingly rely on advanced eDiscovery tools to help them comb through the complex web of digital evidence. Likewise, law students must be prepared to use these tools as they enter the field. 

Keeping Electronic Data Secure

As ESI becomes more central in the discovery process, legal professionals must place an even greater premium on data security practices. Mishandling sensitive files can lead to data breaches, compromise of evidence, court sanctions, or damage to client trust. 

In practice, all ESI must be securely preserved from the moment a legal hold is issued through production. Firms must rely on encrypted storage, access controls, audit trails, and vetted eDiscovery solutions that prioritize compliance and cybersecurity.

Even in law school, it’s never too early to grasp these fundamentals. Future attorneys will be expected to know how to collect and protect digital evidence. Learning the basics of secure data handling today can help students prepare to enter a legal landscape where tech fluency and ethical data handling are just part of the job.

The Legality of Electronic Data

In the U.S., the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) govern the process of eDiscovery. Rules 26, 34, and 37, in particular, set the standard for collecting and preserving ESI legally and fairly, but the FCRP continues to evolve as the data landscape changes. Amendments in 2006 and 2015, for instance, set standards for how courts should deal with data loss or spoliation.

Beyond the FRCP, legal teams must also comply with data privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which restrict access and sharing of personal data. Additionally, the Sedona Principles are a set of evolving guidelines for legal professionals around handling ESI. While not law, they’re based on legal precedents from federal and state cases.

eDiscovery Tools

Given the digital nature of ESI, it’s no surprise that legal teams rely on a range of digital tech to expedite the process. Some of the top eDiscovery software includes tools for:

• Legal hold and preservation: Tools like Exterro Legal Hold simplify the process of issuing legal holds and preventing data deletion. 
• Data collection: Popular eDiscovery forensics solutions like EnCase (by OpenText) assist with data acquisition, analysis, and preservation.
• Processing and culling: Legal tools like Logikcull handle the cumbersome work of collecting, sorting, and deduplicating data to cull out irrelevant information.
• Review and analysis platforms: eDiscovery software like RelativityOne can quickly review, tag, and analyze documents for relevance.
• AI and tech-assisted review (TAR): Legal solutions like Rev can create fast, accurate, and searchable transcripts from depositions or other case-related audio files.

Together, AI and TAR are quickly transforming the eDiscovery process. From smarter document summarization to more detailed conversation analysis, these next-generation legal tools offer faster results and deeper insights that can help legal teams build their cases more effectively.

Nowadays, attorneys can enhance and expedite the presentation phase by using AI-powered legal tools ike Rev to streamline the process.

"We were in trial recently and had a real-world opportunity to utilize Rev in a high-stress environment,” says Adam Levin, criminal defense attorney at Swingle Levin. “I was able to use Rev to successfully cross-examine witnesses by leveraging the transcripts, video synced with transcripts, and various other features to effectively impeach testimony. While it’s possible to do this with other technologies, it’s much harder and requires a gazillion more hours of prep."

Challenges of eDiscovery

Legal teams face plenty of obstacles when trying to maintain best practices for eDiscovery.  Managing an overwhelming volume and variety of digital data is daunting, especially as compliance standards evolve. While advanced technology and AI discovery tools can expedite the process, there is no shortcut for safeguarding sensitive information to avoid breaches or sanctions.

To prepare for these challenges, law students should develop a working knowledge of eDiscovery from the get-go, covering everything from digital evidence workflows to data security requirements. Becoming familiar with legal tech and cultivating collaboration with IT will provide a strong foundation for litigation or compliance roles.

The Future of Electronic Evidence

Our lives aren’t getting any less digital, and neither will the process of legal discovery. As communication tools and digital platforms change, so will the process of discovering and managing electronic information in legal cases. 

Artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced analytics are already transforming how ESI is handled. In well-trained hands, they’ll make the process faster, more accurate, and less costly. In one recent survey, 97% of respondents reported that corporate legal teams were bringing more eDiscovery in-house despite the surge in data volume, thanks largely to efficiency and self-service gains from AI-powered legal tools.

Law students — tomorrow’s litigators — will need to navigate not only case law, but also data formats, legal tech tools, and ethical considerations around digital privacy and cybersecurity. Gaining exposure to legal technology through coursework or certifications can help students step confidently into modern legal practice, where eDiscovery is integral to everyday work at the firm.

Delve Deeper Into eDiscovery With Rev

Sifting and sorting through electronic data is part of the job description for today’s legal professionals. And with more digital evidence available by the day, your team can’t afford to rely on outdated or inefficient methods. With tools like Rev, you can power eDiscovery with AI, streamlining your process while maintaining top-notch security.  

Ready to see it for yourself? Get Rev for Legal today, and enter a new era of eDiscovery.