What Is Email Threading, and How Does It Help in eDiscovery?

eDiscovery or electronic discovery is the process of identifying, collecting, and producing electronically stored information (ESI) in response to a Freedom of Information Act request or a lawsuit. ESI includes emails, IM chats, MS Teams messages, files, presentations, voicemails, social media files and more. However, emails are still a significant component of ESI collections for eDiscovery. 

As evident, eDiscovery can make or break your case, and without it, you can even be looking at hefty fines. Therefore, eDiscovery teams resort to several approaches to ensure an error-free eDiscovery of evidence and documents in a timely fashion. One such approach is message threading in email archiving.

What is an email thread?

Consider an email exchange that has been ongoing for some time. In most situations, the last email in a thread will contain the contents of all previous emails. Reading the last email will provide a comprehensive picture of the thread’s discourse. This holistic view of the entire email conversation is an email thread.

How does email threading work?

Email threading analyses emails and automatically organizes them into thread groups in chronological order. This analysis looks at existing conversation IDs, email header data and other document attributes. Then, it examines all of the emails to see if the entire chain is contained in a single email. Finally, emails are categorized into four groups:

Inclusive

The email’s last message has unique content, and the email contains all attachments that were previously included in earlier emails.

Inclusive minus

The email’s final message includes unique material, but it lacks some of the attachments included in previous emails.

Inclusive copy

An inclusive copy is a carbon copy of an inclusive or inclusive minus email.

None

This email’s content is completely included in at least one other email designated as an inclusive or inclusive minus.

How is it different from Outlook and Gmail threads?

At first glance, this appears to be identical to Outlook and Gmail’s discussion groups, but there are differences. Consider an email discussion that split into two; for example, someone responded to an email that wasn’t the most recent in the chain. Thus, the final two emails in the chain contain different content. Typically, Outlook and Gmail would still group the emails leaving out the response to the most recent in the chain. This will result in incomplete threads because the response also contains unique content.

However, email threading breaks down each email into its components and compares them. The final two emails would be tagged as inclusive, guaranteeing that the reviewers won’t lose any context when they read all the emails designated as inclusive.

Therefore, email threading allows users to find similar information in one place by grouping them and streamlines the investigation by eliminating the duplicates. It also helps get a holistic view of the entire email conversation and expedites the document evaluation by displaying the emails in structured threads.

Conclusion

Due to its benefits, many eDiscovery and compliance software provide email threading features. However, email threading is complex, and reviewers are prone to overlook its significance in information management solutions. Make sure to read the entire thread and follow the necessary procedures to guarantee that you have access to it.

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