Crane on Law by James Crane

I am so energized as more and more legal professionals are taking an interest in e-Discovery! The greatest accomplishment of the amended Rules is that it forced legal professionals to account for the digital world around us. One integral and sometimes misunderstood part of that world is metadata. Since I am asked fairly regularly about what metadata is and why it matters, I thought we could look at a few metadata items over the next few posts.

First, what is metadata? Basically, it is the system information about the document, or “the data about the data.” The first place I like to go for e-discovery definitions is the Sedona Conference Glossary. (http://www.thesedonaconference.org/content/miscFiles/TSCGlossary_12_07.pdf). The Glossary defines metadata as:

Data typically stored electronically that describes characteristics of ESI, found in different places in different forms. Can be supplied by applications, users or the file systems. Metadata can describe how, when and by whom ESI was collected, created, accessed, modified and how it is formatted. Can be altered intentionally or inadvertently. Certain metadata can be extracted when native files are processed for litigation. Some metadata, such as file dates and sizes, can easily be seen by users: other metadata can be hidden or embedded and unavailable to computer users who are not technically adept. Metadata is generally not reproduced in full form when a document is printed to paper or electronic image.

That is a good start -we’ll look at more next week.