Friday, May 11, 2007
Beware of Going Native
No, going native doesn't mean stripping naked and running down the hall at your law office. ALM printed an article called Discovery Savings: Going Native. I honestly don't think Native will save you all that much time or money. In fact, reviewing in TIFF may be faster and is really the only choice if you're adding redactions and/or other endorsements (your vendor may need a couple of days lead time to start the TIFF conversion process before you start your review, however). How long do you have to wait for a 1,000 page Excel file to download using a native viewer compared to a TIFF rendition that loads quickly, one page at a time? What about corrupt files? Corrupt files can bring a native viewer crashing to its knees, whereas TIFF processing will often provide a placeholder for these types of files indicating that the original file was inaccessible by normal means. You will save significant time in troubleshooting hours alone if TIFF conversion can help separate the wheat from chaff when it comes to the quality of your documents. If you are reviewing in Native to cull your documents, that may be seem wise initially, but if your review tool can't convert that document on the fly to TIFF, that means a stoppage to your workflow so that you can export your work product to a system that does. You may ultimately need a tool that supports TIFF conversion for redactions, endorsements, and bate-stamping or you may want to produce relevant documents in TIFF, per agreements that you and opposing counsel made during pre-trial conference (Rule 34 to the Revised FRCP). Either way, merging your issue codes and document tags to a disparate system just because your original tool didn't support a specific piece of functionality is fraught with inconsistency and risk.
The real question is can you do both? Are you utilizing a tool that will offer the time benefits of reviewing in Native and switching over to TIFF-on-demand when needed? No reputable vendor in this day and age is charging you for non-responsive TIFFs. TIFF-on-demand is the norm, and its best to find a tool that has integrated native review (should you need it).
The real question is can you do both? Are you utilizing a tool that will offer the time benefits of reviewing in Native and switching over to TIFF-on-demand when needed? No reputable vendor in this day and age is charging you for non-responsive TIFFs. TIFF-on-demand is the norm, and its best to find a tool that has integrated native review (should you need it).
Labels: efficiency
¶ 11:08 PM
Comments:
<< Home
It's your blog and your opinion is king here, but since you've opined that native production isn't going to deliver cost savings over TIFF, can I at least inquire how much experience you have managing large scale native productions?
How should a reader respond to your statement, "How long do you have to wait for a 1,000 page Excel file to download using a native viewer compared to a TIFF rendition that loads quickly, one page at a time?"
First of all, you picked the form--i.e., spreadsheets--that even the most ardent apologist for TIFFs readily concedes requires native production. Add in your nuance that it's a 1,000 page Excel spreadsheet and the notion of conducting a meaningful reveiew as a series of TIFFs "one page at a time" is out the window. If all a reviewer cares about is logging lots of pages to support a pretense of progress and mucho billable hours, that's the way to go. But if you want to test the evidence and understand it the way the other side understands it, blowing it out across 1,000 pages of TIFFs is the wrong way to approach the task.
It's been my experience that I can load a 1,000 page spreadsheet in native much faster than a 1,000 page TIFF version, but even if your experience is different, has it occurred to you that the greater speed is not a consequence of greater efficiency but is achieved by stripping away much of the meat of the evidence (e.g., its formulae and metadata)? I can move empty bankers boxes faster than full ones, but I'd prefer to conduct my review and assemble the evidence in my case using the latter.
As far as comparing the time to load a page versus an entire spreadsheet, you need to factor in the overall time to complete review of that massive spreadsheet. Once a native spreadsheet is loaded, it's much faster to move between cells and worksheets than it would be to do so in TIFF--page-by-page--and that's not even considering the fcat that few spreadsheets format well in TIFF. Most comment on how they can't make much sense at all of a spreadsheet in TIFF.
Post a Comment
How should a reader respond to your statement, "How long do you have to wait for a 1,000 page Excel file to download using a native viewer compared to a TIFF rendition that loads quickly, one page at a time?"
First of all, you picked the form--i.e., spreadsheets--that even the most ardent apologist for TIFFs readily concedes requires native production. Add in your nuance that it's a 1,000 page Excel spreadsheet and the notion of conducting a meaningful reveiew as a series of TIFFs "one page at a time" is out the window. If all a reviewer cares about is logging lots of pages to support a pretense of progress and mucho billable hours, that's the way to go. But if you want to test the evidence and understand it the way the other side understands it, blowing it out across 1,000 pages of TIFFs is the wrong way to approach the task.
It's been my experience that I can load a 1,000 page spreadsheet in native much faster than a 1,000 page TIFF version, but even if your experience is different, has it occurred to you that the greater speed is not a consequence of greater efficiency but is achieved by stripping away much of the meat of the evidence (e.g., its formulae and metadata)? I can move empty bankers boxes faster than full ones, but I'd prefer to conduct my review and assemble the evidence in my case using the latter.
As far as comparing the time to load a page versus an entire spreadsheet, you need to factor in the overall time to complete review of that massive spreadsheet. Once a native spreadsheet is loaded, it's much faster to move between cells and worksheets than it would be to do so in TIFF--page-by-page--and that's not even considering the fcat that few spreadsheets format well in TIFF. Most comment on how they can't make much sense at all of a spreadsheet in TIFF.
<< Home
