Efficient and phased method of processing large collections of electronic data known as 'best match first'™ for electronic discovery and other related applications

Abstract

A method of more efficient, phased, iterative processing of very large collections of electronic data for the purposes of electronic discovery and related applications is disclosed. The processing minimally includes: text extraction, and the creation of a keyword search index, but may include many additional stages of processing as well. The method further includes: definition of an initial set of characteristics that correspond to 'interesting' data, followed by the iterative completion of processing of this data based on a combination of user feedback on the overall relevance of the documents being processed and the system's assessment of whether or not the data it has recently selected to promote in the processing completion queue has the desired quality and quantity of relevant data. The process continues until all identified data has either been fully processed, or discarded at some intermediate stage of processing as being likely irrelevant. This has the result of effectively finishing the processing much earlier, as the later documents in the processing queue will be increasingly irrelevant.