E-Discovery is used in companies to identify, prepare and provide data (usually e-mails and documents) relevant to a specific subject matter or to transfer it to third parties.
The term originally comes from the Anglo-American jurisdiction and describes the part of a discovery that concerns electronic documents, such as e-records, e-mails or chat protocols. An E-Discovery process is intended to ensure the completeness of the data and at the same time minimize the risk of losing business secrets. The process is usually supported or partially automated by software.
The EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model) community, a group of legal and E-Discovery experts founded in 2005, has summarized the key processes of the E-Discovery process in the EDRM model. The resulting concept was graphically represented as an EDRM diagram and has become an industry standard.
The EDRM diagram is composed of several blocks that can be performed individually or together. The individual modules do not have to be processed in a fixed order, rather it may be necessary to repeat individual modules once a better understanding of the data has been gained or a changed situation has occurred.