Our team of eDiscovery specialists tackle your frequently asked questions and pressing "in the trenches" legal tech topics.
Tuesday's Tip #1 - Load Files:
To ensure a seamless and painless exchange, it’s always best to have a document exchange protocol in place or at the very least, a discussion with opposing counsel and/or your litigation support vendors regarding the format of load files.
So, what exactly are load files?
To put this in perspective, a paper index lists the documents with their brief description. Load files do the same, but it can also contain the actual documents themselves. Think of load files as the assembly kit to populating a database – once all the components are imported, you should have a complete database with the coded information, and a mechanism to view the documents at the same time.
Load files can be divided into two categories:
- Coding: This is the data file containing all the fielded data related to a record (for example: author, date, subject, etc. This information is either extracted from electronic data processing or objectively coded by someone).
- File Reference: These are the files that contain the path or directory where images, native files or OCR/Text files reside so that the software can link the records to their respective files in a database. This means that you can view the documents along with their coding when reviewing records in your legal discovery platform.
There are numerous types of load files, and while some were designed to only work with specific software (such as Summation), many software developers recognize that parties might use different review tools and have ensured their application can import or export various load files to help facilitate compatibility with other platforms.
Some of the common load files and software you might encounter are:
Software |
Compatible Load files |
CSV, TXT, DAT, OPT, LFP, DLF |
|
CSV, TXT, DAT, OPT |
|
MDB, CSV, TXT, DAT |
|
CSV, TXT, DII, LST |
Still not quite sure how load files work? We can help, contact us for assistance.
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