iPad App for eDiscovery: idocument REVIEW

Reprinted with permission from the July 1, 2011 issue of Law Technology News, ©2011 ALM Media Properties, LLC.


idocument REVIEW, a new iPad App was recently introduced in a brief article by John Cleaves for Law Technology News. The new application sells for $29.99 and claims to tag, highlight, and redact documents. Those features, without more, made it worthy to investigate. There are, however, more key features:

No internet access required to review your documents.

Files are loaded through iTunes in a custom load file format (three files). To load a 20,000 page case takes about 2 and a half minutes.

You can load up to 20,000 pages per case load

You can load multiple cases.

You can Keyword search or search by document ID.

You can tag documents (like in Concordance, Summation, etc.) with up to 16 tags all of which can be customized to whatever the user needs (by the user and on the fly).

You can highlight and redact (black or white).

From iTunes:

idocument REVIEW has been developed to aid the on-the-go litigator! Unlike other document review tools available, idocument REVIEW is not dependent on an internet connection for access to your documents. Maintaining folder structure and OCR, idocument REVIEW provides an essential tool for you to review your documents right on your iPad.

The app allows users to tag, highlight and redact documents -- all at their fingertips. The app is also capable of sorting by tags and searching by keywords and image keys. Reviewing up to 20,000 pages per case load, exporting your changes after review is made possible by Discovery Document Technologies.

The app manages the content of a case on the iPad in three files: a DDT load file, an image file containing the document images, and an OCR file containing extracted text from the images. As advertised, idocument Review allowed me to tag, highlight, and redact documents -- all at my fingertips. I sorted content by tags and searched it using keywords and image IDs.

So what's the process?

1. Provide the data to Discovery Document Technologies for conversion to an iPad load file.

2. Save the iPad load file to the computer you synchronize your iPad with.

3. Synchronize the files with your iPad using iTunes. On your iPad....

4. Review your documents.

5. Export a .DDT file and send via e-mail to Discovery Document Technologies for processing against the original files.

6. Discovery will then send you a revised edition of the original images of your data.
So, this all sounds pretty good. It even comes with a sample data set, which is one of my pet peeves for iPad apps which need some material to learn with. The set is from the Enron matter, which is actually something I worked on several years ago.

There are some great training tutorials on the web site, which will get you quickly up to speed. This is not a complex app – at least from the user’s perspective. It is fairly simple to use, and easy to learn. It seems to run searches very quickly. The only downside of the search results that I can see is that it doesn’t highlight the text. Since you are viewing the image, and not the underlying OCR text file, you will have to visually look for your search hits on the returned pages, if you wish to verify your results.

One little “gotcha,” is the fact that once you’ve completed your review, you’ll need to send a file to Discovery Document Technologies in order to get your reviewed/redacted production set. The app, while useful, won’t be of much value if you can’t get your work product out of it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since DDT does have a very good reputation, but just know that you’re going to be married to them throughout the case.

I also did not find any complex search-building options. Typing a simple string of “Enron AND email” rendered no hits, so you’ll be restricted to using this as sort of a first round review. Again, not that that’s a bad thing, but this clearly isn’t going to replace Summation or Concordance.

I wasn’t feeling so warm about spending $29.99 on an app that, while it does appear to be a great value (especially in comparison to applications like Summation or Concordance), requires you to send everything to DDT for processing. However, I found that if you are loading at least 3GB of data, they will give you a voucher for the app, making this more of a “value-added” approach. With that, it becomes a very nice alternative to using a PC, especially if you’re traveling. In the right scenario, it may even be possible to have an entire review team working on iPads. Happy reviewers (with iPads) are good reviewers.

Conclusion

If you’d like to work with some of the coolest stuff available, idocument REVIEW for the iPad is for you. It really is a kick to use, and it works well. Although it has limitations, if you’re able to fit it into your workflow, you’ll have fun doing it. Another way to look at it might be that if you have a set of data to process anyway (3 GB or more gets the app included free), and the processing pricing is acceptable, try it out.
idocument REVIEW $29.99 (or free with 3 GB data order)

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