8.4 E-Discovery, E-Filing, Word Processing & Spreadsheets

Technology competence is no longer optional color commentary. EC-1.1(d) of the 2022 NFPA Code requires a paralegal to stay current on legal applications, electronic communication, and device and data security in the office and remotely. The PCCE clusters four tools under that duty: e-discovery, e-filing, word processing, and spreadsheets. You will not try a case from a Prometric booth. You will be asked what a litigation hold is for, what metadata can reveal, what a CM/ECF filing still needs, and which everyday Word and Excel functions keep a file defensible.

ESI and the EDRM

Electronically stored information (ESI) is information stored in electronic form: email, texts, collaboration chat, voicemail, databases, social media, phones, laptops, cloud drives, vehicle data, and the backups of all of those. It is still a “document” for discovery purposes even though no one printed it.

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) is the industry map of the workflow. At the PCCE’s altitude, know the spine:

1. Identification — which custodians, which systems, which date ranges
2. Preservation / litigation hold — stop the automatic deletions
3. Collection — gather the data in a forensically defensible way
4. Processing — decompress, extract, de-NIST, de-duplicate, thread email, render for review
5. Review — responsiveness, issues, confidentiality, privilege
6. Production — deliver the designated set in the agreed form

Information governance sits before a dispute; presentation sits at deposition and trial. Do not let those bookends erase the six working stages.

The litigation hold (preservation notice) is the paralegal-heavy moment. Once litigation is reasonably anticipated, the duty to preserve attaches. The paralegal, under attorney direction, helps identify custodians and data sources, circulates the hold, tracks acknowledgments, and reminds IT to suspend auto-delete, mailbox-cap purges, and phone-wipe policies. A hold that is drafted but never sent, or sent but never followed up, is how spoliation arguments are born.

Metadata is data about data: author, created date, last-modified date, custodian, file path, email header fields, tracked-changes remnants, and GPS or device identifiers. It can prove a timeline. It can also reveal privileged comments sitting in a Word file. Never “clean up” metadata, backdate a file property, or strip native files unless the attorney has decided the form of production and the clawback plan.

FRCP 26 and 34 without retrying the whole discovery chapter

Keep the civil-procedure deep dive in the litigation chapters. For this section, remember the technology pieces:

• FRCP 26(f) requires the parties to confer early, including about ESI — form of production, preservation, and privilege-log mechanics.
• FRCP 26(b)(2)(B) addresses ESI that is not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost; the producing party must say so, not silently omit the backup tapes.
• FRCP 34 lets a requesting party specify the form of ESI production (native, TIFF plus load file, searchable PDF). If no form is specified, the producing party must produce as the information is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form — not a deliberately degraded dump.
• FRCP 37(e) is the ESI-spoliation rule: when ESI that should have been preserved is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps, the court may order curative measures and, upon finding intent to deprive, may presume, instruct, or enter default or dismissal.

The paralegal’s usual products in this workflow are the custodian list, the hold log, the privilege log (date, author, recipients, privilege claimed, description that does not waive the privilege), and quality-control of the production (Bates continuity, family integrity, native-file playability). Do not produce, hold, or destroy on your own authority.

Electronic filing

Federal civil, criminal, and bankruptcy courts use CM/ECF (Case Management / Electronic Case Files). States use their own e-file portals. The concepts transfer:

• Register, maintain a working login, and file in the correct court and case.
• Convert the paper to the court’s required format. Many courts want PDF/A or a text-searchable PDF, not a photographed blob.
• OCR (optical character recognition) so the clerk and the judge can search the filing.
• Bookmarks for exhibits and for long motions.
• Exhibit numbering and file-size limits. Split or lead-sheet as the portal requires; do not dump a 400-megabyte video into the wrong event type.
• A certificate of service. In many CM/ECF courts, the Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) constitutes service on registered users, but unregistered parties and some pro se litigants still need traditional service. Read the rule; do not assume the NEF served everyone.
• Courtesy copies: electronic filing does not automatically abolish a judge’s standing order for a paper chambers copy.
• Download the confirmation / file-stamped copy into the CMS the same day.

Filing at 11:58 p.m. in the court’s time zone is often timely in federal CM/ECF; some state portals and some judges close earlier. A courtesy copy delivered the next morning does not make an untimely e-file timely. Never file from a personal Gmail account “because the portal was down” without the attorney’s direction and a record of the outage.

Word processing and spreadsheets

Word processing on the PCCE is about control, not fonts.

• Styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, body) make a table of contents (TOC) possible with one refresh. Manual tabs and underlined spaces break the next revision.
• Track changes / redlines show who edited what. Send a clean copy and a redline when the attorney asks for both. Never accept all changes on a brief or a contract without the attorney’s review — hidden deletions are how a damages figure disappears.
• Compare generates a redline between two versions when track-changes was not left on.
• A table of authorities (TOA) is built by marking citations and then generating the table. It is not typed by hand on the morning of filing if you can avoid it.
• Cross-references, paragraph numbering, line numbers, and confidentiality legends in headers are everyday competence.

Spreadsheets are where numbers and logs live:

• Damages models (medical specials, wage loss, offsets)
• Privilege logs
• Deposition indexes (page/line, exhibit, witness, issue)
• Medical chronologies (date, provider, treatment, Bates source)

Protect formulas, freeze header rows, and check the math before the number appears in a demand letter. Do not email an unprotected workbook of medical data through consumer mail. Device and data security is EC-1.1(d), not “IT’s problem.”

Worked path

A complaint is served. The paralegal helps the attorney identify twelve custodians and the firm’s Microsoft 365 tenant, sends the litigation hold, and gets written acknowledgments. IT suspends auto-delete. Collection happens with a vendor; processing de-duplicates the set. In review, the paralegal objectively codes date and author and, under supervision, applies issue tags and privilege tags. A privilege log is built in a spreadsheet from those tags. The production is Bates-stamped and exported as TIFF-plus-load-file because that is what the FRCP 34 request specified. Separately, the answer is drafted in Word with styles, a TOC, and track-changes for the attorney. The e-filed PDF/A is searchable, bookmarked, accompanied by a certificate of service, and followed by the courtesy copy the standing order still wants. The file-stamped confirmation is saved to the CMS. None of that is optional polish. It is EC-1.1(d) competence.