Managing cold data (the type that is rarely or never used) is essential for effective data lifecycles. Relativity’s cold storage contains archival data, which can’t be used for legal reasons, and administrative information, such as compliance data. While this is useful, manually storing outdated data is inefficient and expensive. Fortunately, CaseFlow automation helps you manage everything easily and effectively.
After data is collected, its lifecycle goes through several phases. Creation is a vital stage but the others are just as critical. Culling inactive data and then doing staging, repository, review, and finally, storage are essential to preserving and safekeeping your information.
Early Case Assessment (ECA)
ECA is the first step in the data lifecycle storage, as it’s essential for assessing your data for relevance and age. During this process, you determine whether you need the data and its age for administrative purposes and whether the information is necessary for legal reasons, such as compliance. If data does not meet any of these criteria, its storage helps you organize the information and cut costs.
Culling
After your information has been assessed, the next step is culling. This involves decreasing, organizing, and managing information volume and relevance. This type of management helps control your time, effort, and costs when managing data lifecycles. Deduplication of files, along with identifying identical ones, is a crucial part of culling.
Staging
Data staging involves extracting data from sources and loading it into intermediate storage areas before transforming and loading it into another system. The staging area is a temporary place during an Extraction, Transform, and Load process. It entails removing data, transforming it into a usable form, and loading it into storage. Staging areas are often transient, with the contents erased after the information is moved to permanent storage. Data staging is external or internal.
External Staging
With external staging, data comes from outside sources and is transformed before being loaded into a data warehouse. This process is useful when you are streaming data in real time, when a raw data volume exceeds storage capacity, and when actions like merging are necessary.
Internal Staging
Internal staging is in a local warehouse, so the data is internal (i.e., not streaming from external sources). This type of staging is useful when you want to keep data from one source and still clean house. Its primary advantage is that a single source reduces complexity and helps prevent data sprawl.
Repository Workspaces
A repository workspace is used to store documents for future use. This is a secure and private development area to keep your work, and it’s accessible to your team members and other stakeholders. You can make the information private or share it as needed.
Review Workspaces
A review workspace is for reviewing, coding, and producing documents before Matters storage. This storage is team focused and available to selected stakeholders. As with any aspect of the storage data lifecycle, a review workspace should be secure.
Cold Storage for Matters
The final phase is storing your data and inactive Matters for an extended time. However, manual storage is time consuming, error prone, and difficult to bring back online if you need to retrieve data or workspaces. Working manually also shuts stakeholders out of the process, making teamwork and compliance difficult.
Without storage, your database has less space, and you have to deal with costly storage expansion. Redundant data can make organizing files confusing and hard to manage. Storage provides a secure, orderly, and inexpensive place for information. For legal compliance, it also helps you archive and store information that may be relevant to future litigation.
Manual storage management can create numerous problems. The high information volume, culling and staging processes, and repository, review workspace, and storage are where you can lose time, have errors, and increase expenses.
Information Loss
Manual culling can lead to errors. File deduplication, while sorting for data age and relevance, sometimes leads to the erasure of unique files, file miscategorization, data loss, and the need for restoration. The deduplication process also compromises security and compliance if it loses files.
Expensive Staging
Manual management mistakes occur when data is misfiled and miskeyed. The process causes increased costs when data retrieval is less adaptable to changing input loads. Both external and internal staging are time consuming and error prone when done manually. It leads to mistakes, less adaptability, and time wasting.
Inaccessible Repositories
Permissions for repositories need to be secure, but they also need to be accessible. With manual repositories, gaining access to data is complicated, as it requires notifying stakeholders individually about storage decisions.
High Information Volume
Processing a high volume of information manually is a tedious task. Since you’re moving large amounts of information to storage, losing track of data is all too easy. You also risk running out of space during this phase.
Matter Timing
Knowing when to move Matters to different data lifecycle stages is challenging and takes a great deal of time. Individual Matters are often scheduled on various dates. Moving them to repository or cold storage mode and archiving offline phases can cause data and time loss.
Matter or Workspace Archiving
Archiving a Matter or workspace manually is time consuming because administrators must run reports to determine whether a Matter can be archived to storage, and clients must also be notified of Matter or workspace movements.
CaseFlow helps manage storage at every stage of the process. From ECA to end storage, it manages your most complex problems when you’re administering documents and other information. Its culling, staging, repository, and archiving processes are automatic and secure. Timing and stakeholder issues are safe and immediate according to storage needs. Flexibility is essential in automation, and it does not require sacrificing organization and security.
Culling Solutions
During deduplication, CaseFlow has features to manage your data. These applications monitor the process to ensure that redundant information is separated from what’s new and distinct. During culling, CaseFlow helps prevent data erasure and disorganization, thus saving you time that would otherwise be wasted recreating data that has been erased or made redundant.
Staging
During staging, CaseFlow helps cut time-consuming errors. The application manages the external staging data from outside sources, such as real-time streaming data, and the internal data from local sources. This type of management is valuable when your raw data volume exceeds storage and when you have older or redundant internal staging needs. Taking care of information during the staging phase enables you to manage data and records more effectively later.
Repositories
Informing all stakeholders about archive changes helps you organize your storage data effectively. With CaseFlow, stakeholders are notified when alterations are made. Notifications occur automatically, so management is efficient, transparent, and legally compliant.
Document Volume
Document volume and keeping up with data management can be overwhelming. CaseFlow moves Matters at high volumes into storage without sacrificing precious space. These are automatically organized and stored without data loss. You save time that would otherwise be wasted if you managed everything manually.
Timing
Timing is critical to compliance and organization. You need to schedule Matters on different dates and to separate cold storages. With CaseFlow, your data is automatically attached to the appropriate dates and the correct places. Therefore, you save time and effort as your information moves through the data lifecycle of repository, storage mode, and archiving.
Archiving
With CaseFlow, teamwork is easier because all involved parties have access and can manage data. Throughout all actions, it ensures data security for your peace of mind.
A seamless transition from ECA into culling, staging, repository, review, and cold storage is essential. Otherwise, you’ll be manually managing data, dealing with a high volume of documents, scheduling Matters, and notifying all stakeholders of storage updates, risks, data loss, disorganization, and compliance issues. These problems translate into a waste of time and effort. Storage automation with CaseFlow enables you to manage these data lifecycles automatically and securely.
Ready to take control of your Relativity data lifecycle and eliminate unnecessary costs and wasted time? CaseFlow provides the automation that you need to proactively manage your Relativity storage, seamlessly transitioning cases through Repository, Cold Storage, and Archive based on your specific requirements. Don't let manual processes bog you down; see how CaseFlow can save your law firm time and money. Contact us today, and discover the power of automated Relativity data lifecycle management.