International Business Machines Corporation
DISCOVERING LATENT CUSTODIANS AND DOCUMENTS IN AN E-DISCOVERY SYSTEM

Abstract:

Discovering second-order documents and latent custodians in an e-discovery system is provided. A list of first-order documents and document custodians within a base state of the e-discovery system are identified based on a plurality of terms corresponding to a meet and confer practice for a legal matter instance. The plurality of terms is masked within the first-order documents. The first-order documents having the plurality of terms masked are divided into groups. A list of second-order documents is generated from a group of documents. A list of second-order document custodians is generated based on corresponding custodian relationships to second-order documents. Finally, each second-order document custodian in the list of second-order document custodians that has a corresponding rank exceeding a defined rank threshold level is identified as an official document custodian in the e-discovery system.