One of the challenges of preparing documents for production and review is dealing with PC files that are not easily imageable or imageable at all. Excel files are a common example of PC Files that are produced in native format rather being reduced to a PDF or image file (printing these automatically can result in 1000 page PDFs that are completely useless). In addition, other file formats such as WAV, WMV, MP3 and MP4 can also contain valuable information so need to be produced. (One other format that i-Legal encounters regularly are CD based imaging disks from hospitals and other providers of imaging services – we will discuss that in the next blog).
These files present a couple issues: 1: getting them numbered for production (producing a file without a number is just the express lane to headaches later on) 2: as well as ensuring that the files are properly reviewed for use in prosecuting the case. This blog deals with numbering the files. Suggestions for review and processing them will be mentioned later.
There are a couple ways to approach the numbering issue depending on whether or not the technique/system you use for numbering works with non-PDFs. One method, if your system can handle it, is to treat the non-PDF file as a single number or page in the sequence and number all the files at once. The Demo version of i-View has a renumbering function that provides that feature.
If you create a folder in the i-View system and copy all the files to that folder, open the case, and navigate to the new folder. You can then, from the Report page, select renumber to start the process. The system will notify you that there are non-PDF files in the system and remind you that it will include them in the series. The message and the numbering screen:
The system shows you how the numbering will be processed, including noting the target number.
After processing the files are named in sequence. i-View allows them to be coded and reviewed which will be addressed in an upcoming blog.
If your numbering system can only handle PDFs, i-Legal recommends that a “marker” page be created for each file to be produced in native format. Even if you can number native files, the marker page technique ensures the existence of the native file remains visible, allows the marker to travel with the other production PDFs and it puts anyone reviewing files on notice that they need to find and open the native file even if they are using alternative review tools such as iAnnotate or simple bookmarked index PDFs (review systems that only handle PDFs).
After naming the marker sheet, it is very important to rename the native file itself to the bates number.
Remember to keep the native files with the production set so they are easy to review