Goodbye Bates Stamp? New Discovery Databases Focus on Documents, Not Pages
Can it really be true? A mainstay of massive document productions for decades, the Bates stamp could be going the way of the dinosaur, a legal publication says.
New document production software can save time and money by producing relevant materials as documents, rather than on a page-by-page basis. But, when doing so, they make it virtually impossible to use the Bates-stamping process to number every produced—and unproduced—page sequentially, for subsequent reference by all concerned, according to Law Technology News.
The article doesn’t explain exactly how litigators keep track of the native files that are produced under new software created by vendors such as Equivio, Recommind and Vivisimo Inc. However, it appears that the documents themselves, rather than the pages, are given a unique number that can be referenced in indexes and privilege logs of relevant and materials. The new system is faster and cheaper, in part because it reduces duplicative documents, the article reports.
Although it would seem unlikely, based on the widespread use of the Bates-stamp approach in American litigation, that it could disappear from use anytime soon, this is one innovation that lawyers, paralegals and staff who have ever had to spend hours stamping, labeling or printing out numbered documents in discovery surely are ready to embrace.
Related coverage:
Journal of Technology Law and Policy (PDF): “Hash: The New Bates Stamp”
Day on Torts: “Do You Bates-Stamp Documents?”
PDF for Lawyers: “Bates-Stamping Documents the easy way”
