System and method for indexing electronic discovery data

Abstract

Systems and methods for efficiently processing electronically stored information (ESI) are described. The systems and methods describe processing ESI in preparation for, or association with, litigation. The invention preserves the contextual relationships among documents when processing and indexing data, allowing for increased precision and recall during data analytics.

1 . A method of searching electronic documents, comprising, using one or more computer processors:
 (a) ripping data from each of a plurality of documents;   (b) from the ripped data, detecting embedded objects in each document;   (c) converting data from the detected embedded objects to text;   (d) in a buffer, storing information including: (1) text of each document and (2) the text obtained from conversion of the detected embedded objects in each document, wherein the storing includes storing the spatial relationship between (1) and (2) according to the original locations where the embedded objects appear in each of the documents;   (e) receiving search criteria including a plurality of search terms provided by a user; and   (f) searching the stored information based on the search criteria and identifying documents, if any, that contain matching occurrences of at least a first of the search terms in an embedded object and at least a second of the search terms not in the embedded object.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein at least one of the embedded objects contains visual information. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the at least one of the embedded objects is an image. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein converting data from the image to text comprises optical character recognition (OCR).