One question I get asked a lot lately at webinars and seminars is; doesn’t Microsoft Exchange have all the tools I need to respond to a Discovery request? In other words can you rely on Exchange 2010 discovery capability for defensible search and litigation hold? Depending on who you talk to the answer can be yes or no.

Now don’t get me wrong, Microsoft has made great strides on its eDiscovery capability over the last several years with Exchange 2007 and 2010. But there is at least one major question to ask yourself when considering if Exchange 2010 has the capabilities, by itself, to respond to a eDiscovery request. That question is; can I respond to a email discovery request quickly and completely enough to satisfy the opposing counsel and Judge in a defensible manner?

One potential problem I’ve run across is a question of completeness of the eDiscovery search capability in Exchange 2010. Can you rely on it to produce the search results so that 1, all potentially responsive ESI can be found and placed on a litigation hold and 2, does the results set you eventually end up with contain all potentially responsive ESI?

Exchange 2010 comes with a default package of what Microsoft terms as iFilters. These iFilters allow Exchange to index specific file types in email attachments. This default iFilter pack (a description of which can be seen here) must be installed when Exchanger server 2010 is installed. This default iFilter pack includes the following file types:

.ascx, .asm, .asp, .aspx, .bat, .c, .cmd, .cpp, .cxx, .def, .dic, .doc, .docx, .dot, .h, .hhc, .hpp, .htm, .html, .htw, .htx, .hxx, .ibq, .idl, .inc, .inf, .ini, .inx, .js, .log, .m3u, .mht, .odc, .one, .pl, .pot, .ppt, .pptx, .rc, .reg, .rtf, .stm, .txt, .url, .vbs, .wtx, .xlc, .xls, .xlsb, .xlsx, .xlt, .xml, .zip

An obvious missing file type is the Adobe Acrobat .pdf extension. Many/most eDiscovery professionals will tell you that PDF files make up a sizable share of potentially responsive ESI in discovery. What if your IT department didn’t know about this limitation and never installed a separate iFilter for Adobe Acrobat files? What if your legal department didn’t know of this missing capability?

Your discovery searches would not be returning responsive PDF files causing major risk in both litigation hold and your overall discovery response.

Another question in reference to the Exchange 2010 Abobe Acrobat search capability is the effectiveness of the search. In a WindowsITPro article from last year titled Exchange Search Indexing and the problem with PDFs, Or “Why I hate Adobe with the Burning Passion of 10,000 Suns”, Paul Robichaux writes:

“This test provided an unsatisfying result. I don’t feel like I found or fixed the problem; I just identified it more closely. Telling my users, “Sure, you can search attachments in Exchange, unless they happen to be PDFs, but then again maybe not,” isn’t what I had in mind. I hope that Adobe fixes its IFilter to work properly; it’s a shame that Adobe’s poor implementation is making Exchange search look bad.”

Corporate attorneys in organizations using Exchange 2007 and 2010 as their email system should immediately ask their IT departments about their system’s ability to index and search PDF files.

Attorneys on the other side of the table should be asking defense counsel the status of their Exchange 2007/2010 Adobe Acrobat search and litigation hold capability.