[PROPOSED] ORDER REGARDING THE PROTOCOL GOVERNING THE PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS AND ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION
FREDERICK F. MUMM, Magistrate Judge.
Pursuant to the agreement reached between Plaintiffs and Defendants herein, this Court adopts and orders the following Protocol relating to the Production of Documents and Electronically Stored Information ("ESI") in this proceeding.
1. ESI shall be produced organized by custodian. All ESI should be provided with a delimited text file that contains the following Production Fields, to the extent available: Beg Doc (Bates), End Doc (Bates), Beg Attach, End Attach, Page Count, Custodian, Dupe of Custodian, Title, Email Subject, Parent Date (Date of Parent for Document Families populated for all parent and all family members, Sent Date for Email, Modified Date for Loose Files), Date Sent, Time Sent, Date Created, Time Created, Date Last Modified, Time Last Modified, Author, From, To, CC, BCC, File Name, File Extension, SHA1 Hash, Text Link (link to Extracted Text/OCR), Native Link (link to Native Files), and Confidentiality Field.
2. ESI shall be produced in black and white single-page TIFF images at not less than 300 dpi resolution, along with associated document-level text files, image load files (.DII, LFP, and OPT) indicating appropriate document and family breaks, as well as metadata load files in delimited text format containing the fields required by this protocol. Each TIFF image must convey all the information the document contains, disclosing all track changes, hidden content, notes, and any hidden slides, rows or columns, subject to any redactions. For ESI that does not contain redactions, the producing party shall produce an extracted text file for each electronic document where text can be extracted, and an optical character recognition ("OCR") text file for each imaged paper document and each electronic document for which text cannot be extracted. For documents that contain redactions, the producing party shall provide an OCR text file for the unredacted portions of such documents.
3. Excel files and audio and video files shall be produced in the native format that is referenced in their Native Link field, along with a TIFF placeholder image that is named by the beginning Bates Number of the file, associated document-level text files, image load files (.DII, LFP, and OPT) indicating appropriate document and family breaks, as well as metadata load files in delimited text format containing the fields required by Paragraph 1. The parties shall maintain family groups together in one production and shall not break family groups apart in separate production volumes. Non-Responsive family members must be produced together with the Responsive Family Members. In instances where the producing party does not assert a privilege with respect to the entire family of documents, the producing party should replace any subset of privileged documents within the family for which it is claiming a privilege with slipsheets stating "Document Withheld as Privileged." The slipsheet shall contain the "Document Withheld as Privileged" language in the Center of the page, with Confidential Branding Bottom Left, and Bates Branding Bottom Right of the page. Each slipsheet should be re-OCR'd at time of production to remove Extracted Text.
4. ESI produced in native format designated as Confidential pursuant to the parties' Stipulated Confidentiality Agreement and Protective Order shall (a) have the confidential designation added to the filename (i.e., ____ Confidential) or loadfile, and (b) have a confidentiality designation in a metadata field. In addition, any ESI produced in a native format shall be accompanied by a single-page TIFF image with a Bates Number, confidentiality designation (if any), and a notation that the ESI was produced in native form.
5. To the extent that a party produces a native Excel or other data file that links to data from another data file on the producing party's computer systems, a receiving party may make reasonable requests to identify in the producing party's production, or for the producing party to separately produce, any linked data or files such that the linkage is either maintained or easily identifiable. The parties will confer in good faith to determine if they can agree on a reasonable method for identifying in the producing party's production, or for the producing party reasonably to separately produce, any linked data or files such that the linkage is either maintained or easily identifiable.
6. Hardcopy documents shall be produced in accordance with Paragraph 2. The Production Fields for hardcopy documents shall include: Beg Doc (Bates), End Doc (Bates), Beg Attach and End Attach.
7. Subject to any redaction, each document's PDF file shall contain the same information and same physical representation as the document in its original format, whether paper or electronic.
8. If a hardcopy document is more than one page, to the extent practicable, the document and any attachments shall be unitized, and affixed notes shall be maintained as existed in the original format.
9. The party receiving any document in discovery may request that specific documents produced in black and white, identified by Bates Number, be re-produced in color if the production in black and white renders the document illegible. Color documents may be produced in JPG format.
10. Each page of a document produced in TIFF, PDF, or other static image shall have a legible, unique fixed-length numeric identifier that does not interfere with or obscure any information originally appearing in the document. Any confidentiality designation pursuant to the parties' Stipulated Confidentiality Agreement and Protective Order shall be placed on each page of the document so as not to interfere with or obscure any information originally appearing in the document.
11. Each party shall remove duplicative ESI to reduce the unnecessary cost of reviewing and producing duplicative ESI. Before being produced, all parent-level email and loose-file (non-email) ESI should be de-duplicated across all custodians and shared network drives. Individual email attachments should only be de-duplicated on a family level. Email attachments should not be de-duplicated against loose file ESI on Shared Drives. All ESI should be produced with a metadata field listing all custodians where duplicate documents were found.
12. Each party may produce only the most-inclusive email threads in which all prior or lesser-inclusive are legible. Similarly, a party may list the most inclusive email thread on any required privilege log. However, if the most inclusive email thread contains only portions that are privileged, then the thread must be produced with only the privileged material redacted. For purposes of this Paragraph 12, email threads are email communications that contain prior or lesser-inclusive email communications that also may exist separately in the party's electronic files. A most-inclusive email thread is one that contains all of the prior or lesser-inclusive emails, including all attachments, for that branch of the email thread.
13. Documents and ESI may be produced by hard drive, share site, CD, DVD, or USB drive at the producing party's option and the parties agree to cooperate on any technical issues encountered with accessing produced materials. Any documents produced to Plaintiffs via hard drive, CD, DVD, or USB should be ss on file for Khai LeQuang of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Any documents produced to Defendant via hard drive, CD, DVD, or USB should be delivered to the address on file for John LaSalle of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. Any documents produced by share site by either party shall be delivered to the email addresses for all attorneys for the receiving party who have entered an appearance in the action.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
