Modern e-Discovery software can extract hundreds of metadata fields from documents. Extracted metadata is typically stored in a back-end database and a subset of it is exported and included in the e-Discovery production or review database. We often receive questions regarding which metadata fields should be included in an e-Discovery review database or which metadata fields should be requested during an electronic document production.

The answers to these questions depend on the requirements of each case and should ultimately be determined by the legal team. That said, we have prepared the following list of e-Discovery database fields as an example, with the hope that it will serve as a good starting point.

Please note the following:

The list below is for electronic documents only, and does not include fields for scanned paper documents. If you keep scanned paper documents and electronic documents together, you should add to the list paper specific fields such as BOXNO, BOXNAME, FOLDERNAME etc.

Depending on the legal review platform, e-Discovery databases can also contain several additional administrative and/or user populated fields

We recommend that the time fields be populated using 24-hour format with second precision (e.g. 23:14:05)

Field Name Description INPUTID Internal document identifier DOCID Document ID for native-only databases PARENTID Parent document ID for native-only databases BEGDOC Beginning Bates number ENDDOC Ending Bates number BEGATTACH Beginning Bates number of the attachment family ENDATTACH Ending Bates number of the attachment family PRODBEG Beginning production Bates number PRODEND Ending production Bates number PRODDATE Date document was produced PRODVOL Production volume ID BATES_RANGE Bates range of the document ATTACH_RANGE Attachment range of the document family ATTACH_IDS IDs of documents attached to this document ATTACH_CNT Number of attachments indicated in document metadata EXT_ATT_CNT Number of attachments actually extracted PGCOUNT Page count VOLUME_ID Deliverable volume ID CUSTODIAN Custodian name SOURCE Source of processed ESI DOC_TYPE Document type EMAIL_HEADER Header information for e-mail message EMAIL_BODY The message body of e-mail message EMAIL_FROM E-mail author EMAIL_RECIP E-mail recipients EMAIL_CC E-mail carbon copy recipients EMAIL_BCC E-mail blind carbon copy recipients EMAIL_SUBJ E-mail subject MAIL_FOLDER Mail folder inside a mailbox MAIL_STORE Name of the mail store ATTACHMENTS File names of attached documents IMPORTANCE Importance of e-mail message MESSAGE_ID Message ID for e-mail CONV_INDEX E-mail conversation index (PR_CONVERSATION_INDEX) UNREAD Whether or not the e-mail was read READ_RECEIPT Whether or not read receipt was requested INT_MSG_ID Internet Message ID (PR_INTERNET_MESSAGE_ID) DATE_RECD Date received TIME_RECD Time received DATE_SENT Date sent TIME_SENT Time sent MASTER_DATE Parent date pushed down to child documents MASTER_TIME Parent time pushed down to child documents START_DATE Appointment start date START_TIME Appointment start time END_DATE Appointment end date END_TIME Appointment end time TIME_ZONE Time zone used during processing FILE_NAME File name FILE_PATH File path FILE_TYPE File type FILE_EXT File extension FILE_SIZE File size NATIVE_LINK Hyperlink to native file MD5_HASH MD5 Hash Value SHA_HASH SHA Hash Value AUTHOR Document author SUBJECT Document subject TITLE Document title CATEGORIES Categories metadata field extracted from document COMMENTS Comments metadata field extracted from document KEYWORDS Keywords metadata field extracted from document COMPANY Company metadata field extracted from document REVISION Revision # of document SENSITIVITY Sensitivity metadata field extracted from document MODIFIED_BY Name of person who last modified the document SEARCH_HITS Search keywords that made the document responsive (semi-colon delimited) DOC_DATE Best available date for document (combination of several date fields) DOC_TIME Best available time for document (combination of several time fields) DATE_CRTD Document creation date (internal document metadata) TIME_CRTD Document creation time (internal document metadata) DATE_LST_PRN Date document was last printed (internal document metadata) TIME_LST_PRN Time document was last printed (internal document metadata) DATE_LST_MOD Date document was last modified (internal document metadata) TIME_LST_MOD Time document was last modified (internal document metadata) DATE_LST_SVD Date document was last saved (internal document metadata) TIME_LST_SVD Time document was last saved (internal document metadata) FS_DATE_CRTD Document creation date (file system metadata) FS_TIME_CRTD Document creation time (file system metadata) FS_DATE_MOD Date document was last modified (file system metadata) FS_TIME_MOD Time document was last modified (file system metadata) FS_DATE_ACC Date document was last accessed (file system metadata) FS_TIME_ACC Time document was last accessed (file system metadata) ENCRYPTED Populated if document was encrypted EXCEPTION Populated if document was a processing exception OCRED Populated if document was OCR’ed TEXT01 Document text/OCR field #1 TEXT02 Document text/OCR field #2 TEXT03 Document text/OCR field #3 TEXT04 Document text/OCR field #4 REDACTED_TXT Populated with redacted text for redacted documents

Table 1 – Example e-Discovery Database Field List v1