Guide to Working with Legal Exports and Load Files

This introduction covers:

What is a legal export?

What is a load file?

In what scenario would you import and export a load file?

What formats support exporting load files for a legal export?

What legal load file types can you import?

A legal export is an electronic export of court documents that has largely replaced the need to produce huge volumes of specifically-numbered, paper-based documents in court.

The Legal Export functionality within Nuix Workstation uses the same terminology and provides the same functions available in paper-based legal documents. With Legal Export, you can add Bates numbering to documents, insert slip sheets, and generate the associated load files that enable recipients to import the pre-processed data into the review tool of their choice.

What is a load file?

Common terms related to load files include:

Load file: A file that stores metadata for a set of scanned images or electronically processed files that is used to identify the parent-child (family) relationship between documents, including attachments, and also where each document begins and ends.

A load file may also contain data relevant to the individual documents, including selected metadata, coded data, and extracted text. Load files should be obtained and provided in prearranged or standardized formats to ensure the transfer of accurate and usable images and data.

Concordance load file: A DAT file is a common format for structured data exchange of text files that contain fielded data separated by a specific ASCII character. Concordance load files also usually contain a header line that defines the fields contained in the file.

Opticon load file: An OPT file is a file format that associates a Bates number to the path of an image file and is used to load images to a document review database.

These definitions are taken from the Sedona Conference Glossary: eDiscovery & Digital Information Management, Fifth Edition, 21 SEDONA CONF. J. 263 (2020). Nuix Workstation allows you to both export and import data related to load files used for legal purposes.

In what scenario would you import and export a load file?

It is common in court cases for both sides of counsel (prosecution and defense) to produce load-ready data for each side to examine and contest. Each side exports its evidence to the other counsel for examination and imports or ingests the opposing counsel's source files to examine their evidence for relevancy and thoroughness. Many organizations and government offices also have standardized load-ready data that they send and receive, even if a court is not involved.

When preparing load-ready data, an agreed upon format is necessary, and both sides must prepare a slip sheet of what files are in scope, including their file types and the metadata fields in use. Slip sheets are individual placeholders for files that were unable to be produced (like images and spreadsheets), or PDFs that were unable to be printed because their source file was encrypted or could not be opened. A slip sheet must flag any of the following anomalies in their evidence set: documents found to be damaged, deleted, encrypted, or that are no longer available in their original state.

When a file is unable to be imaged due to its file type, a placeholder slip sheet image can be provided instead that has key metadata information about the file and perhaps a note that says "refer to native". Each side can use the load-ready data to their own advantage and upload it into their review tool of choice.

In some circumstances, you may want to ingest a subset of evidence from another legal source into an evidence set that you want to export as one legal export. In this scenario, those documents could be imported, or ingested from a load file.

What formats support exporting load files for a legal export?

In Nuix Workstation you can export data to create a legal load file that any of the following third-party legal review applications or eDiscovery programs can ingest:

Discover Flat File

Ringtail (MDB)

Concordance (default preference)

Discovery Radar

DocuMatrix

EDRM XML

EDRM XML/ZIP

Everlaw

iCONECT

InControl

IPRO

Summation

After preparing the file beforehand, you can import or ingest the following types of legal load files as part of an evidence set in Nuix Workstation:

Autonomy

Concordance

EDRM XML 1.2

See Add load files as evidence into a case for details.

Why does Nuix recommend using a Production Set to perform a legal export?

Especially when dealing with a large volume of documents, or documents with a large number of pages, a Production Set provides you with a staging ground that allows you to validate what you will export. It allows you:

To define a numbering scheme.

To define or refine what Imaging Profile to use.

To generate printed images and see how much of your evidence set has been rendered correctly.

To generate print previews so you can check the order of documents and validate their numbering sequence.

If errors are detected, and there are limitations relating to the use of some number sequences, you must rectify your Production Set's numbering settings or reorganize your evidence set to split it in a way that accommodates the numbering settings.

See Use a Production Set for a Legal Export for details, and the Nuix Workstation Guide to Using Production Sets for detailed information on this subject.

To add details to a slip sheet when you find that an essential document is missing, damaged, unable to be produced electronically, or is too large to do so (for example, architectural drawings).

To reduce the amount of work to be done at the time of exporting because you number, deduplicate, and image your items in advance.

See the Nuix Workstation Nuix Workstation Guide to Using Production Sets for detailed information.

You may also want to see the Nuix Workstation Guide to Redacting as redacting text in documents is often part of preparing a legal load file.