Document Numbering Down Under: Australian Document Management Protocols

In Australia, the courts have mandated each document collected for a matter have a unique document ID assigned to it, which it then retains regardless of whether or not the document is produced. A document ID is assigned during processing, and is not changed. This necessitates that PDFs be prepared for each document during processing, so specific page numbers can be assigned to documents which are not produced in native form. The pagination must be fixed ahead of production.

Schedule 1 of the Default Document Management Protocol to the Federal Court of Australia's Practice Note CM 6 provides Document IDs be in the format, 'SSS-NNNN', with SSS specifying a party code. It also states that courts may order Document IDs to be in this format: SSS-BBB-FFF-NNNN', with BBB signifying a box number, email mailbox, or some other appropriate classifier. FFF represents a folder for a further level of organization. The number of digits used may vary. The protocol is very influential in Australia, and shows up widely in production guidelines. See for example, the Document Production Guidelines of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission:

The protocol sets very specific guidelines for litigators down under to follow, listing the field to be used in a document description spreadsheet in Schedule 6, and a list of document types to use in Schedule 7.

Schedule 5 to the protocol states that page numbers be placed in the top right corner 3 mm from the top and right edges of a page.

TCR

TCR is a commonly used abbreviation for ‘total

cost of review’ This is the amount spent on a complete e-discovery workflow. A team with Relativity analyzed TCR and has reported its results here.

As the below chart shows:

Review cost still takes up most of the budget, with processing cost coming in a distant second. Collection and hosting fees are minimal.

The study shows that targeted collection will reduce TCR in the long run, if not in the first couple of months.

According to the study, if targeted collection is performed, in the end TCR will be reduced by almost a third.

Google Vault Retention of Drive, Groups, Hangout, and Voice Data

Here are some key points on how Google Vault, the data retention and electronic discovery app described in last night's tip, stores data from Google applications.

DRIVE

• Google Vault can save, search, and export files saved to Google Drive from Google applications like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and files from other applications. It will not retain folder directories created in Drive.

• When there are links in files from Google applications to other Google application files, the links will not remain active if the linked to file is outside the scope of the data to be added to Vault.

GROUPS

• Messages sent to Google Groups (listserv email groups) will not be retained in Vault unless the Groups has been set to retain the conversation history. Moderated messages that are not approved will not be stored in Vault.

• As with Gmail, only up to 1 MB of message text and attachments will be indexed. A single megabyte will hold about 250 pages of text.

HANGOUT

• Google Hangout messages will not be stored in Vault unless the chat history is turned on. For Hangout messages sent before April 8, 2015 only those specially designated to be on the record will be retained for Vault.

• Google Talk chats can also be made on or off the record, but an admin can turn off the conversation history altogether.

VOICE

• Google Voice data for archived users or former employees will not be retained.

• Google Voice data will only be retained for users with standard or premier licenses.

• While Vault will retain text messages, call logs, and voicemail messages, it will not retain Voice data created before June 5, 2019.

• Vault cannot access recordings made of calls.