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GoldFynch

Website
goldfynch.com
Documentation
goldfynch.com/docs
I use it for
Culling mailboxes and company drives down to what the assignment covers, and producing that selection.

In GoldFynch I load a complete mailbox or drive, cull it in steps down to what the assignment asks for, and produce the selection. That filtering works better than the filter in Outlook, and it is reliable: someone else can recheck every step afterwards. When I take everything first and only filter afterwards is on Why an e-discovery platform.

The big advantage is that you pay per case and are not tied to a subscription. So there is no fixed cost. There is only a variable cost, and you can treat it as an expense of the case itself, not as a fixed cost for you as an expert or for your practice.

First: secure the account

Switch on two-factor authentication before you go on site. As soon as you upload somebody else’s data, whoever has your password can get at it. Arrange it beforehand and in peace, not in a corridor next to a custodian.

Loading in

GoldFynch bills by case size. How big the case will be, you only know once you have the PST. Then do the sum: a PST is compressed and roughly doubles in size on ingestion, so a PST of 5 GB needs a case of 10 GB. That costs $76 a month, a 3 GB case $27 and a 50 GB case $342. You pay pro rata. Your productions also count towards the size (GoldFynch blog). Check the current rates before you create a case, because they change. How to create a case and upload files is in the documentation: creating a case and uploading files.

Some files the platform cannot process, for example empty files or formats it cannot open. They show up as errors. Note how many there were and what you did with them, and include them in the dataset. A reader who sees an unexplained difference in the counts will start looking for something behind it.

Culling in steps

Cull in successive steps and give each step its own tag. For example:

  1. Folders: inbox, sent items and deleted items. Deleted items belong in there, because what somebody threw away is often exactly what the assignment is about.
  2. Date: the period from the assignment.
  3. Keywords: the search terms from the assignment.

Note after every step how many files remain. With that series of counts a reader can recheck your selection. Without those counts nobody can follow how you got from the complete mailbox to the documents produced, and you can be asked about that at a hearing.

Usually you go from a few tens of thousands of files to a few thousand. Show the steps in between, each with what accounts for the difference.

GoldFynch culling funnel Cumulative culling: folder scope, date limit, keywords and finally families. From tens of thousands of files down to a few thousand. Without the "apply tag to the whole family" setting the attachments are missing. Folder scope tens of thousands of files Date limit Keywords + families, tagged a few thousand files + families, untagged attachments missing: compare with the bar above Each bar is cumulative on the previous one. Width shows the order of magnitude, not an exact scale.

Attachments: tag the whole family

Switch on apply tag to the whole family. Otherwise you tag an email without its attachments, while those attachments are often exactly the documents that matter. The documentation on file families explains how this option relates to the other two (always ask, item only).

The difference in the counts is large. Show the step with and without families side by side, so the reader can see that the attachments were included.

Keywords

How to use AND, OR, NOT and the other operators is in searching for keywords and advanced search. These are the pitfalls that are not covered there:

  • Search on whole words. If a keyword also occurs in the custodian’s email domain, it matches every email and the step filters nothing. You only see that from the counts.
  • Use full names, not surnames alone. People with the same surname on both sides of a dispute do occur.
  • Search on the other side. Searching a company’s mailbox for the name of that company returns everything. Search on the counterparty, a third party or a file reference.
  • Test short terms first. Words of fewer than four or five characters produce a lot of noise. Compare the counts with and without spaces around the term before you use it.
  • Keywords also match file and folder names, not just content. Look at the hits to find out whether that helps or gets in the way.
  • Convert a relative period into dates. Parties read a term such as “more recent than” differently. State in the report the dates you actually used.

Producing in native format

Produce in native format, not as PDF. Conversion loses metadata that can be decisive later: send times, headers, embedded properties. You can always make a readable PDF from the original later, but not the other way round. The choice between “Natives only”, “PDF only” and a load file is covered in productions in GoldFynch.

Redaction

If a trade secret has to be protected, you can exclude files or black out passages. When redacting, use the Final mode, not Preview. In Preview the text stays underneath and travels into the production. See redacting in GoldFynch.

Watch out for archives too. If a redacted file sits inside a ZIP, that ZIP can no longer be produced in native format. You get a slip sheet in its place, and the rest of the archive is missing from the production. Then deliver the extracted contents separately and explain why in the report.

Check the production

A self-check at the end: load the finished production into a new, empty case and search for what should have been kept out. You do not have to, but it is the last moment to put a redaction error right. If the production is small, the free 0.5 GB test case that every account gets is enough.

Closing down

Delete the data permanently from the platform as soon as the production has been accepted, and note the date and method in the report. Without that note a party cannot check that the data is gone.

Viewing a PST without Outlook

The free GoldFynch PST Viewer opens a PST in the browser, without uploading the file. Useful for a lawyer without Outlook. Culling and producing you still do in a case.

Access databases

An Access database cannot be loaded directly. Convert it to CSV first, and state in the report how many tables that produced and how many records met the search criterion. That way the reader can work through from source to result here too.