In the earlier days of ediscovery, the spotlight was on handling the spiralling volumes of unstructured data such as emails and documents. Email in particular changed the face of ediscovery and nowadays, most lawyers working in litigation or competition are now sophisticated consumers or users of ediscovery technology. However, another source of electronic evidence is becoming increasingly important- structured data. Structured data refers to any data that resides in a fixed field within a record or file. This includes data contained in relational databases and spreadsheets and so often includes financial or operational information.
Research conducted by the Data Warehouse Institute has found that approximately 47 per cent of corporate data are structured in nature, compared to 31 per cent of unstructured data, leaving the remaining 22 percent classified as semi-structured data.
Yet, despite the prevalence of this kind of data, many clients are unsure how to deal with unstructured data and when faced with Question 5 of the Electronic Document Questionnaire, they are firmly out of their comfort zone.
Whilst it might be intimidating or tempting to neglect this, structured data is a valuable source of electronic evidence and quite often is a treasure trove of information. With the right tools and expertise, it is possible to unearth trends, patterns, and red flags which can be used in an investigation or as intelligence into an organisation’s operations.
Much like ediscovery tools revolutionised the analysis of emails, data analytics tools are helping tackle the challenge of extracting, processing and transforming structured data into meaningful electronic evidence. This evidence can be stand alone or supplementary to unstructured data such as email and documents typically reviewed and exchanged during the ediscovery process in legal proceedings.
Want to find out more? Shine a light on Data Analytics
Join experts from Kroll and Kroll Ontrack on 13th October 2016 for a discussion of the ways in which data analytics tools can be used to provide advanced data insight for investigations, litigation and regulatory requests.
Using real world case studies, our speakers will illustrate how these tools have been used to unlock relevant information, and suggest ways to get the most out of your use of analytics.
Date: 13th October 2016
Timetable
- Registration: 6:00pm
- Presentation: 6:30pm – 8:00pm
- Drinks and networking: 8:00pm
- Location: Kroll Ontrack, Nexus, 25 Farringdon Street, London, EC4A 4AB
To register your place, please click here.
