Foundations and Trends

E-discovery refers generally to the process by which one party (e.g., the plaintiff) is entitled to “discover” evidence in the form of “electronically stored information” that is held by another party (e.g., the defendant) and that is relevant to some matter that is the subject of civil litigation (i.e., what is commonly called a “lawsuit”). This survey describes the emergence of the field, identifies the information retrieval issues that arise, reviews the work to date on this topic, and summarizes major open issues.