Electronic court books often contain multiple versions of the same document, requiring a different approach to identifying and managing duplicates compared to the discovery process. Unique document IDs have already been assigned to the duplicates, and these IDs may have been referenced in other documents. Therefore, simply disposing of duplicates is not feasible.  However, when the presiding officer specifies that only a primary version of a document should be referenced during the hearing, a different approach is needed to achieve this outcome without altering existing document IDs.

Action

Adio's near-duplicate analysis offers a solution to this problem. By examining document content, near-duplicate software identifies similar documents and potential duplicates within a client-defined range (typically 95% and above). These similar documents are then grouped together in a report and presented to the parties. They can review the documents outlined in the report internally or outsource the task.

Result

Once an agreement is reached on which duplicate is designated as the "primary" document, metadata in The Hearing Book is updated. From that point on, the parties are required to use the ID of the primary document throughout the hearing. The duplicate versions of the primary document remain in The Hearing Book for hyperlinking and other referencing purposes and can be viewed in the results window or grouped in the duplicates context of the Everlaw viewer.

This outcome benefits everyone involved: the court can work with a single version of each document, and the parties are relieved from the cumbersome task of retrospectively modifying document IDs in their own documents.

You can learn more about Everlaw's near-duplicate analysis and contexts at: Context Panel: View and Batch Code Related Documents in Review Window - Knowledge Base (everlaw.com)