Scope
This guide helps your legal operations team determine when data collection is complete and review can begin. It covers decision criteria, implementation steps, and reference points to make this transition efficiently. You'll find practical signals and checkpoints that indicate you're ready to move forward.
Key Concepts and Definitions
Collection involves identifying, preserving, and gathering electronically stored information from systems that may contain relevant evidence. The goal is to secure data without altering content or metadata.
Review is the analysis phase where your legal team examines documents to determine relevance, responsiveness, privilege status, and evidentiary value. This is where evidence becomes strategy.
Early Case Assessment (ECA) establishes the initial scope: claims, defenses, time periods, and custodians. Your collection boundaries should align with this assessment.
Data map is a comprehensive inventory of where potentially relevant information exists across your organization's systems, including email, collaboration platforms, cloud storage, shared drives, and business applications.
Legal hold (also called a Records Freeze) is the preservation order that prevents deletion or modification of potentially relevant data during litigation or investigation.
Requirements Breakdown
Collection Completion Criteria
You're ready to transition when these conditions are met:
1. Complete data source identification
Your data map reflects the organization's actual communication environment for the matter at hand. This includes:
- Email systems
- Collaboration platforms (Teams, Slack, etc.)
- Cloud storage repositories
- Project management applications
- Shared network drives
- Relevant websites and social media accounts
- Any business system connected to the claims or defenses
2. Legal holds are active and verified
Before you begin review, confirm that preservation orders cover:
- All identified custodians
- Relevant systems and platforms
- Communication channels used during the relevant time period
3. Collection matches ECA scope
The data you've gathered aligns with the matter's defined parameters. If you're expanding beyond the initial scope without a clear justification tied to new case developments, you're over-collecting.
Implementation Guidance
Step 1: Map Before You Collect
Create your data inventory before large-scale collection begins. Identify where relevant information exists across systems, then prioritize sources based on the likelihood of containing responsive material. Tools that create a unified view across platforms help you avoid treating each communication channel as a separate collection project.
Step 2: Set Collection Boundaries
Define these parameters explicitly:
- Custodian list (with justification for each)
- Date ranges tied to specific events or claims
- Keywords or search terms validated against your matter
- File types and data categories relevant to your case
Step 3: Implement Preservation Holds
Issue legal holds before collection starts. Verify receipt and compliance. Document the scope of each hold and the systems it covers.
Step 4: Collect Within Scope
Gather data according to your defined boundaries. Resist the urge to "just grab everything" from a system. Over-collection creates a review burden without improving outcomes.
Step 5: Verify Completeness
Ask these questions:
- Have we identified all systems where relevant data likely exists?
- Do our legal holds cover those systems?
- Does our collected data align with the claims, defenses, and time period from ECA?
- Are we collecting new sources because of case developments, or because we're uncertain?
If you're collecting due to uncertainty rather than evidence of new relevant sources, stop and move to review.
Common Pitfalls
Confusing volume with thoroughness
Collecting more data doesn't mean you've done better work. Every additional gigabyte increases review costs and extends timelines. Collection should be targeted, not comprehensive.
Treating platforms as silos
Modern work happens across multiple systems. A conversation might start in email, continue in chat, and reference documents in cloud storage. If you collect these sources separately without preserving their relationships, reviewers lose context. Your data map should show how systems connect.
Delaying review to "be safe"
The instinct to keep collecting stems from fear of missing evidence. But endless collection delays case strategy development. Once you've mapped sources, issued holds, and collected within scope, additional collection rarely changes outcomes; it just increases costs.
Ignoring custodian overlap
If three custodians were all on the same email thread, you don't need to collect it three times. Understand communication patterns before you collect to avoid redundant data.
Skipping ECA alignment checks
Your collection should match the matter's scope as defined during Early Case Assessment. If you're gathering data that doesn't tie to identified claims, defenses, or custodians, you're creating review work that won't produce useful evidence.
Quick Reference Table
| Checkpoint | Ready to Review | Keep Collecting |
|---|---|---|
| Data sources | All likely sources identified and mapped | New communication platforms still emerging |
| Legal holds | Active holds cover custodians and systems | Holds incomplete or unverified |
| Scope alignment | Collection matches ECA parameters | Collecting beyond defined scope without justification |
| Source relationships | Understand how platforms connect (email → chat → documents) | Treating each system as isolated silo |
| Custodian coverage | All relevant custodians identified with documented rationale | Adding custodians based on speculation |
| Time period | Collection covers matter-relevant dates | Expanding dates without tie to case timeline |
| Review readiness | Team can analyze collected data for relevance and privilege | Still discovering major new data sources |
Decision point: If you're collecting new sources because of concrete case developments or newly identified custodians, continue collection. If you're collecting because you're uncertain whether you have "enough," stop and start review. You can always collect additional targeted sources later if review reveals gaps.
The goal isn't to eliminate all uncertainty before review begins. The goal is to preserve relevant information, collect within defined scope, and move to analysis once you've covered likely sources. Endless collection delays strategy and increases costs without improving outcomes.
