Patent ID: 7730113

Claim:
A method in a network for analyzing data produced for legal purposes, the method comprising: receiving, from a source that is external to the network for analyzing data produced for legal purposes, a plurality of electronic files, including email of which some have duplicative information, that are arranged according to a directory structure, that are subject to a legal proceeding, and that are produced by at least one party involved in the legal proceeding; at a first server unit in the network at a back-end, providing the received electronic files in a searchable format; at a second server unit in the network at the back-end, providing metadata associated with the received electronic files while preserving directory structure information of the directory structure; identifying duplicative electronic files that are duplicative of each other or that contain information that is at least partially duplicative of other electronic files; and under control of a network server at the back-end, receiving at the back-end a request for electronic files having a specified characteristic; processing either or both the metadata in the second server unit and the electronic files in the searchable format to determine and communicate a set of electronic files having the specified characteristic that are responsive to the request, thereby facilitating processing of the determined set of electronic files for legal purposes; and first applying a legal annotation to a particular electronic file having the specified characteristic and that is responsive to the request, and then applying in bulk same said legal annotation to each of a group of identified duplicative electronic files stored at the back-end and that each contain information that is at least partially duplicative of information contained in said particular electronic file, to eliminate having to separately apply said legal annotation to each of the group of duplicative electronic files.