Lexis LAW PreDiscovery - Early Data Analyzer

Lexis LAW comes with a separate application (or module) called Early Data Analyzer. EDA can be used to filter out or cull data, and reduce the overall cost of electronic discovery, based on several criteria:

1. File hashes - for files that do not contain user related data.

2. Duplicates

3. Date ranges.

4. File types.

5. Email sender domain.

6. Language

Note that EDA makes it possible to export email threads without attachments that are filtered out.

EDA has settings for analysis which give you the option to use either MD5 or SHA1 either across custodian sources, and within individual custodians. Text extraction can be skipped in order to improve performance. Language identification analysis can be restricted to only a specified number of KB from the beginning of a file, or restricted to only 'common languages'.

The Indexing features can be modified to ignore or include accents, make text case sensitive, or insert spaces between Asian language characters. Email addresses, dates, and credit card numbers can also be automatically identified.

During the import process LAW will generate an exception log which will indicate which files it could not recognize or process.

EDA has a Global Dashboard which allows it to take advantage of the processing power of multiple networked computers.

In addition to endorsing documents with bates numbers, and indexing text extracted from native files, LAW EDA has two different programs which can render OCR, Abbyy FineReader and ExperVision OpenRTK. As noted in the Tip of the Night for May 16, 2015 different kinds of OCR software will generate different results. Abbyy is 2 to 3 times slower than OpenRTK but it supports Asian language characters, can run multiple instances on a single PC, and can generate PDF/A files. See the Tip of the Night for September 25, 2015. EDA can be configured to detect multiple columns of text on a page while OCRing, and also be modified to deal differently with dot matrix, typewritten, or laser & inkjet printed pages.

LAW PreDiscovery

Here's a quick overview of some of the system requirements of Lexis LAW.

A processor speed of at least 1.7 GHz is required, and 3.0 is recommended. I thought my Toshiba laptop had a very robust processor, but it seems subpar at 1.73 GHz. You really need something special to run LAW. The recommended 4GB of RAM is a bit more reachable.

When you choose the option to create a new case, LAW will by default create the new case in the Program Files folder, but the System Requirements notes state that new cases should not be saved to this folder if you're running Windows 7 or Window Vista. Windows 8 and Windows 10 are not mentioned, but Windows XP and Windows 2008 are, which indicates the trial version is somewhat out of date. Windows Vista user can expect to encounter slower processing speeds.

Full text searches can't be run on LAW databases that use an Access database as their base. MS SQL Server is needed for such searches, and the Express Edition of it can be downloaded for free. However the free version won't work for databases greater than 10 GB and full text searching isn't possible with the Express Edition when there is more than 4 GB of data.

While LAW can run on either a 32 bit or a 64 bit operating system, the Electronic Discovery loader detailed in last night's tip will not work with the 64 bit version of Outlook.

LAW requires that eDrawings (freeware used for CAD) be installed to handle .dwg graphic files.

Download Trial Version of Lexis LAW PreDiscovery

If you're not already using it, you can download a 30 day trial version of Lexis LAW PreDiscovery at this site,

http://www.lexisnexis.com/litigation/products/law-prediscovery. LAW is one of the most widely used eDiscovery applications. It can import data from more than 2000 file types and interface with more than a hundred different types of scanners, and follow through with the endorsing, OCRing and production of the imported documents. The file to install the trial version will download without an extension. To make it work just rename the file to include 'exe' at the end. When installing be sure to include the options not just for LAW, but also for Early Data Analyzer, and the TIFF/PDF drivers. Over the next month I'm going to spend some time test driving LAW.

A good way to start is to load one of the PST folders from the EDRM Enron data set. Open a PST archive in Outlook and then save the attachments to a folder using the macro described in the Tip of the Night for May 14, 2015. Then in LAW go to File . . . Import . . . Electronic Discovery and choose the option on the right for 'File(s)'. Select the files you saved from Outlook and import them. The LAW Electronic Discovery Loader will give you the folloiwng options:

1. filter in or out certain file types.

2. import compound documents.

3. dedupe based on MD5 or SHA-1 hash values, at either the level of the full data set or the custodian level, either logging the existence of the dupes, excluding them, or both.

4. choose the type of data you want to import from .pst files (just email, or contacts, calendar entries, etc.)

5. exclude emails from a particular data range.

6. capture custom metadata, detect hidden rows, columns, & sheets for Excel files, track changes for Word & Excel files, and speaker notes for PowerPoint presentations.

7. de-NIST according to the National Software Reference Library database.

8. convert the imported documents to TIFF images, and index extracted text.

9. identify the language of the text.