Canadian Lawyer

BY DERA J. NEVIN TECH SUPPORT Why should I consider production in 'native' format? I tions is expanding. Examples of this phenomenon include lawyers asking their opponents for Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint documents, or agreeing to turn over video and voicemail messages rather than producing a transcript of those items. It's possible that soon only documents requiring redaction will be exempt from requests for native pro- duction. A "native" document is one that ncreasingly, lawyers are "going native" for production. The trend appears to be in its early stages, but all indications are that the use of native produc- remains in the file format in which it was created. For example, was originally written in Microsoft Word; the document in Word format is this article's native format. A music file might be in mp3 format, or a video clip in wav format. Generally, you need the underlying computer application in order to access and view documents or files in their native format. Historically, most documents have this article what has historically been produced is an image of a paper record that has been digitized. These formats opened up the possibility of digitizing paper records, eliminating the need to copy paper documents to exchange them. In addition, a secondary technical process could be run across documents in image format to make them searchable. All of the documents could then be loaded into a database and catalogued, improv- ing the ability to organize them. And documents in tiff or pdf format could be easily redacted through the conversion, documents. For example, spreadsheets do not convert well, usually because the spreadsheet is too large and extends beyond a standard 8.5 x 11-inch format. It is not uncommon for spreadsheets to convert into hundreds and thousands of pages, with rows and columns broken across different pages. This is not only unwieldy, but expensive (as conversion is often charged on a per-page basis). Second, a lot of information can be lost through the format-conversion pro- cess. Formulas in spreadsheets, "notes" on presentation slides, and "track changes" Exchanging native documents can not only improve the quality of the electronic documents being exchanged by preserving the full content of the records, but also lower the overall cost of production. been produced in a "converted" for- mat, such as tiff (tagged image file format) or, more recently, pdf (portable document format), in which the docu- ments were put through a technological process that "petrifies" the face of the document in a digital format, creat- ing an image or picture of the original document. What results is essentially an electronic photocopy of the document. This process has well for a long time, particularly since served lawyers helping lawyers preserve privilege and eliminating the old process of cutting up records. Finally, there was little risk associated with converting document formats, since not much "information" was lost in converting a paper document to an image; any information loss (such as the colour of ink used in a signature) could be validated by inspecting the original. But things change when "native" elec- tronic documents, rather than paper ones, must be produced. First, conversion can negatively affect the readability and usability of 20 SEPTEMBE R 2012 www.CANAD I AN Lawyermag.com in documents are not represented on the converted image. Third, some document formats can- not be converted to an image format. For example, video and audio cannot be "printed" through the conversion process. Additionally, the only way to access rec- ords in some proprietary formats, such as some medical diagnostic images, is to get them in those proprietary formats. Finally, sometimes formatting is sim- ply lost when the file is converted into another format, meaning documents either do not look the same as when they were created, or are so poorly laid

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