Eureka-Discovery (e-discovery)!

Statutory Warning: The below blog contains Technical terms and issues. Read at your own risk. If you go scratching your head in and out, author of the article shouldn't be cursed!

Eureka Eureka!!

Remember the Archimedes Line? I still have the memories of a snapshot of Archimedes running out of the bath-tub shouting the famous word, straight out of my 8th Grade Physics text book. 

My, then classmate, Kapil Umalkar and me would make fun of him then. Don't ask me how Kapil is, I wish he turns out to be another Archimedes running on the streets of Delhi. he stays so out of touch these years,sucker!

Anyways, the I.T. guys find this word very common to their lives. Sometimes, they even don't need to run down the streets and shout the word out, as I.T.  every single minute is offering something new to this globe. That's I.T. for you. (But, don't ask how the I.T. guys really get screwed down by doing so. Every time there is a new upgrade to work upon, Sucks!)

From past couple of months, I have been working in the field of e-Discovery as a Product Analyst. ( I know, a hell lot  of you guys, don't know what it is. Why don't you do me a favor then? Go check the link I have put for it rather then asking me up seperately. "Yaar! Shashi, mast hai yaar, magar e-Discovery kya hai? What is e-Discovery, temme?" )

The designation of Product Analyst may seem so cool, but you will keep figuring out, what you have been actually doing until you Grey down all your hair. he is someone, who is a Technical personnel, guiding and guarding the software all armed day-night.

e-Discovery is a vast new field of I.T. With the well-structured format it has got, it will definitely come out to different horizons of work-flow in and around the Legal world. e-Discovery links I.T. to the Legal World with a brilliance. Sometimes, you fail to figure out in an e-Discovery enterprise, who is from the Legal background and who from the I.T.

It's a known fact that the Legal world  is something that will never die out for sure. It is to stay till humans are alive on the planet. As, SRK says in My Name is Khan, there are two kinds of people in the world, good and the bad. Legal and Judiciary has been into use from the oldest era of mankind. So, I.T. has always got a lot to offer in here and the way e-discovery brings I.T. into the legal world is just very beautiful.

My organization is grooming up the e-discovery concept too with it's s/w tool, which brought me closer to this I.T. concept. But, there are a lot many concepts that need to be fished into the e-discovery house-hold. Most importantly, as going through, few discussions I get to learn from people around, Cloud Computing, which I have studied at basics while pursuing my Engineering.

The most important trouble I think that e-discovery must be facing, atleast I'm when related to e-discovery tools, is  the searching of the required documents.

The searching of documents and data in e-D isn't a normal search, I must make it very clear. you're actually not running a normal search which one performs in Google or Yahoo. Here, you're searching a series of documents that may be a necessity for a legal case. This series of documents may be defined by many metadata fields (metadata: data of a data), many other fields.

These searches are performed in such a way that, you may have to search for funny Tags, with what all names, according to the folders they are in, according to the few words. In short, the searches are never easy. Very Complicated.

Everybody close knows, if interested in something, I'm all High for it. I come out with anything close to it. This time, it's e-Discovery!! Funny, but true, the lazy bone taking interest.

 So, while reading stuffs on this, and facing a hell lot of trouble with the searches, guiding clients and sometimes guiding myself in it. I found out an article somewhere in blue about Concept Searching, which the e-D developers have started working on already.

Ex. 1: "Hey!! Sachin scored 200 in Gwalior in cricket today!"

Ex.2: "Hey!! Sachin scored 200 runs in Gwalior in match today!"

If the term 'Cricket' was used as a keyword in the search, then example line 1 would be found, but Ex.2 won't. But ,they both mean the same.

However, a concept searching tool would be expected to “find” both examples, because “Concept Searching” is, as the name implies, actually looking for “concepts” rather than just keywords.

As mentioned already, let me warn you,that the searches in e-discovery aren't the normal searches. It is also the most important practice in e-D. Just like, you are trying to find few necessary papers in a room packed with millions of sheets. That's crazy isn't it? But, that's what makes e-d a well-practiced concept in the western world. Guess, when Indian lawyers would stop searching legal papers in their moist room jam-packed with files and folders. 

In e-D, while performing a search,You're actually fishing out a doc. or a set of docs, with any field tagged or with any criteria, because these are just not normal documents. A single document can be the apple for your legal case. This tool is doing just what is done above, but on a more focused paragraph or sentence rather than an entire document. 

  

Concept Searching can be successfully implemented categorically for Tags, Buckets,words.

Also, what I believe, what if we are dealing with large set of documents; if there is a 5000 or more pages, that we usually have in e-D, document that is important or “hot”(lol), because of one paragraph, concept searching for similar documents will often produce a large junk. Like, Concept Searching for example a newspaper with Sachin Tendulkar's One-dayer score, would fetch in a junk result of Sachin's Adidas advert. saluting the master blaster.

I certainly believe that the Concept Searching should be very much worked upon by the I.T. world to implement it sooner to e-Discovery. that's atleast going to push off the headaches for easy going chaps like me. Ask a guy like me, what I go through, whenever I have to work on the searches, just has to go round-and-round in these searches.They so very damn confusing. Fellow mates, sometimes would come into rescue me out of the mad mad world of searching.

e-Discovery is a all new world man, so many to come up.Learn it out, the ones who still don't know a pinch about, it's a lot catchy dudes.