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Review: Breeze eDiscovery SuiteBy Bruce A. OlsonFebruary 16, 2010

Breeze eDiscovery Suite www.breezelegalsolutions.com TechnoScore: 4.8 1 = Lowest Possible Score; 5 = Highest Possible Score

T o import documents or electronically stored in-formation in native for-mat into litigation support

programs or trial presentation pro-grams, you need to create a “load file.” Law firms often outsource this task to service bureaus. What can you do, however, if you don’t have a local service bureau, or your budget requires that you process the information yourself? In this TechnoFeature, trial technology and computer forensics consul-tant Bruce Olson reviews Breeze eDiscovery Suite, a do-it-yourself eDiscovery program for document processing and production. Bruce evaluates Breeze from top to bot-tom, including its pricing, basic and advanced features, and tech-nical support.

INTRODUCTIONPracticing law in a small to mid-size firm has its pluses and mi-nuses. Clearly, the size of your firm does not dictate whether you can use modern litigation support and trial presentation technologies as part of your day to day litigation practice. Many lawyers in smaller firms are long-time technology power users. Small firms even have a certain advantage in terms of their ability to be technologically flexible and adaptable. On the contrary, larg-er firms often struggle with inflex-ible annual IT budgets and other

m a n a g e m e n t constraints, lim-iting innovation.

But one signifi-cant drawback does exist — lack of access to service bu-reaus that help you figure out how to load imaged docu-ments, photographs, and case-related graphics into your litigation support pro-grams like Summation or Concordance, or into your trial presentation programs like TrialDirector or Sanction. Smaller firms outside of a large metro-politan area may lack access to service bureaus, whereas smaller firms in big cities may find these service bureaus too expensive.

Furthermore, with the advent of eDiscovery and the need to pro-cess email and other electronically stored information (ESI) in native format, as well as the need to de-duplicate burgeoning ESI col-lections, the challenge of finding the right processing option is even more daunting.

These law firms need a cost effec-tive, do-it-yourself solution.

A FRESH BREEZE?Breeze Legal Solutions’ newly re-leased Breeze eDiscovery Suite (Breeze) offers a full-featured DIY eDiscovery option at a favorable price compared to the competi-tion. The Breeze eDiscovery Suite costs $2,995, including the first year maintenance fee. Thereaf-

ter, ongoing maintenance costs $599 (however, it’s not required, just encouraged). Note that it is a concurrent user license. There are no click charges or other ad-ditional processing fees incurred with Breeze.

Thus, without breaking the bank, the Breeze eDiscovery Suite can meet the needs of any small to mid-sized law firm for process-ing imaged documents or for processing ESI in native format, including email, word processing documents, spreadsheets, pho-tographs, graphics, and the many other types of electronic files that comprise modern litigation.

OVERVIEW OF BREEZEYou may find yourself confronted with a situation in which you need to process a collection of elec-tronically stored documents not only for your own internal purpos-es but for purposes of production to the opposing side. In the real world we still deal with discovery of both paper and ESI, so it helps

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to have a product that can help you process both paper and elec-tronic information.

When combined with a good scanner, the Breeze eDiscovery Suite offers the tools to process scanned electronic images as single or multipage TIFF files, as well as image and searchable PDF files. The image processing mod-ule also provides Bates number-ing, OCR, and merge capabilities. The EDD processing module en-ables you to process electronic documents and convert them to TIFF format.

You can also create a load file for electronic documents, leaving them in native format to use in your litigation support program. When called upon to produce electron-ic information for your less ad-vanced opposition (i.e., they want it in paper), the printing module provides you with the necessary tools to make a high volume blow back production. Finally, the load file tools module contains specific tools that enable you to work with and manipulate Summation DII files, making this an ideal tool for a Summation shop.

It is not uncommon to receive a CD or DVD of imaged docu-ments from the other side in TIFF or PDF format. For some lawyers this constitutes an electronic pro-

duction. While you should always consider whether you want to specify native format for produc-tions, sometimes the electronic paper equivalent is okay, particu-larly if you use some type of litiga-tion support product like Summa-tion or Concordance.

THE PROCESSING PROCESSUsing Breeze’s image process-ing module you can easily select the location of the electronic files to be processed by browsing to the proper folder. You can op-tionally select processing images from subdirectories. You can then move onto numbering to establish the desired scheme for printing DOCIDS on the documents. You can select a prefix to use, and then the available page counter will au-tomatically increment by page. You can predefine the number of digits to use, and use as many leading zeros as you wish. You can also start at a defined number greater than one, which is helpful when adding additional documents to an existing collection.

When processing multi-page TIFF files you have the option of num-bering each page incrementally, or you can number by document with a separate suffix increment-ing on a page basis. You also have custom footer fields avail-able in which you can add leg-ends like “Confidential.” You can also select stamp placement on the documents.

In terms of output, you select an output folder by browsing. You then check off whether you want to OCR the documents, and whether you want to create any particular load files. For DII files you can decide whether to include EndDoc and you can in-dicate if you are using the Enter-prise version of Summation.

Finally, you start the processing, and when you finish, you have a collection of Bates numbered documents in the output folder. The specified load files will ap-pear there as well. In addition, the program creates a CSV file that you can load into Excel to serve as an index.

In terms of EDD processing, you can use this tool to take a col-lection of electronic files in mul-tiple formats and process them for further use. If you use a litiga-tion support tool you will prob-ably want to process them as electronic documents and just create a load file so you can eas-ily load them into the document database. However, you have the option to create TIFF files from the electronic files, including any email attachments. As a result, if you choose, you can number the documents and produce them as TIFF files or even blow them back to paper. You can also OCR the related TIFF files. You can load the TIFF files and OCR files into a litigation support program as well.

ADVANCED FEATURESBreeze has some additional high-er level features as well. You can use custom lists to specify which documents in a given collection

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When combined with a good scanner, the Breeze

eDiscovery Suite offers the tools to process scanned

electronic images as single or multipage TIFF files,as well as image and searchable PDF files.

Without breaking the bank, the Breeze eDiscovery Suite can meet the needs of any

small to mid-sized law firm for processing imaged

documents or for processing ESI in native format.

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to process. You can also create a deduplicated master, and run subsequent productions against the master for additional dedupli-cation. Deduplication uses hash values created at the time of pro-cessing.

The printing module enables you to print from either existing files or from load files. You can select whether to insert slip sheets be-tween documents, print as color or as black and white, and se-lect the print range. The Image Manager in the document tools module enable you to split exist-ing documents by inserting page breaks or to combine pages by deleting a page break. This fea-ture is useful when converting a large volume of single page TIFF files into discrete multi-page doc-uments within the collection. You can then reprocess the collection after modification and create new load files.

TRAINING AND SUPPORTI found the help files included with the software complete. The Breeze Web site contains online training videos. Also, your pur-chase of Breeze entitles you to unlimited technical support. The folks at Breeze Legal Solutions are prompt in their response and knowledgeable in terms of deal-ing with any software issues. My impression is that they came from either a paralegal or litigation sup-

port background, making their level of technical support better than most.

CONSThe only criticism I have of Breeze is that the interface looks a little clunky. It’s very basic, and does what it is supposed to do, but graphically it could use some work. It lacks some of the fea-tures of the more expensive com-petition, but in day to day opera-tions the software has all the tools needed for a modest price.

CONCLUSIONBreeze provides an easy to use software alternative for document and ESI processing to litigation professionals and law firms. It helps you convert image files, cre-ate load files, process native files, and print blowback sets, all from a desktop PC. You can Bates num-ber documents, OCR and batch-process documents, and then eas-

ily turn documents into loadable formats for Concordance, IPRO, Sanction, Summation, and Trial-Director.

In terms of ESI processing, you can simply point Breeze to a di-rectory of native files and Breeze will identify all the files, PST mail stores, and embedded objects. It will also inventory the metadata associated with the files and ob-jects and save that information to an eDII, DAT, and CSV file. All of the native files, emails, and ex-tracted objects will be saved to the output location with the load files. Then, Breeze will instantly convert the native files to TIFF for-mat, and save the files to the out-put location.

These capabilities make Breeze an ideal candidate for small to midsize firms for processing ESI.

For more information contact:

Breeze Legal Solutions(888) 470-0621

sales@breezelit.comwww.breezelegalsolutions.com

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Bruce A. Olson is President of ONLAW Trial Technologies, LLC, a consulting firm offering trial technology, eDiscovery,and computer forensics services. Previously, he was a shareholder in the Milwaukee based law firm of Davis & Kuelthau, s.c. A trial attorney and nationally recognized legal technologist, Olson is AV rated and Board Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He is co-author of “The Electronic Evidence and Discovery Handbook: Forms, Checklists and Guidelines,” published by the American Bar Association. He received the prestigious TechnoLawyer of the Year 2002 @Award from TechnoLawyer, and was Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2004, Vice Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2003, and served on the TECHSHOW Board of Directors from 2000-2004.

You can Bates number documents, OCR and batch-

process documents, and then easily turn documents

into loadable formats for Concordance, IPRO, Sanction, Summation, and TrialDirector.