December 4, 2006; Cupertino, CA -- Abrevity announced today the first affordable, all-in-one software solution that empowers compliance with the new federal rules in effect as of December 1, 2006 for electronic discovery of documents in civil cases. Abrevity's FileData Classifier software and optional eDiscovery Module provide a complete suite to scan, discover, classify (tag), policy manage, and track files and emails for legal discovery.

The eDiscovery Module includes advanced pattern recognition, "target-based" data mining, and heuristic proximity searching to discover and extract key words and phrases and Social Security, credit card, driver's license, and customer account numbers. Regular expression generator capability in the software supports custom pattern recognition for product part numbers, patient IDs, phone numbers, zip codes, company names, etc. An optional module allows indexing and retrieval of individual files from tape media and the software supports hundreds of file types including Microsoft PST email archives. Live email support for Microsoft Exchange servers will be available by mid-year 2007.

The new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) specify requirements for submitting electronic documents -- including files and email -- as evidence in civil cases. The rules were recommended in September 2005 by the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Supreme Court's Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure. The new Civil Rule 5 amendments (below), in effect as of December 1, 2006, can mandate stiff fines for non-compliance:

• Rules 26 and 34 state that a pre-meeting must occur between the companies involved in the lawsuit -- not just between the lawyers, but also between the IT departments. Each of the companies must represent where and how data is stored, and that technology is in place to provide access to that information. Abrevity's FileData Classifier offers a low cost and easy to implement solution to meet this requirement.


• Rule 34 also requires that organizations deliver the content in the format the requestor defines. Typically, the default is the native format, because it often contains hidden metadata that is erased when files convert to formats such as PDF. While this rule may preclude traditional enterprise search solutions -- especially those that convert to a TIFF format -- Abrevity's FileData Classifier allows for classification "tagging" of files in their native format and in their native storage locations.


• Rule 37 codifies the standards around legal hold. When a lawsuit is ongoing, a company must stop destroying all information related to the case, regardless of its own systematic destruction policies. Many companies have automated systems to delete old emails or files, which could also delete evidence. Traditional search solutions that require full indexing are often slow, inefficient, and expensive and do not offer policy management or file tagging to comply with this requirement. Abrevity's FileData Classifier includes policy management and file tagging, as well as targeted discovery and extraction for faster performance with lower storage overheard.

The new FRCP rules require that firms involved in civil litigation must meet within 30 days of the filing to determine how to handle electronic data. They must agree on what records are shared, the electronic format to be used and a definition of "accessible data." Past court actions for failures to comply have been quite harsh and costly. For example, Morgan Stanley was fined $1.5 billion in May 2005 when a judge ruled that the company had failed to preserve information.

"According to a recent survey conducted by Computerworld," says Eric Madison, Abrevity's director of marketing, "over 42% of the IT professionals surveyed said they did not know the status of their firm's preparation for the new rules, and more than 32% said their company was not at all prepared to comply with the new requirements."

Starting at under $15,000, Abrevity's FileData Classifier™ software application and eDiscovery Module rides on top of its SLICEbase data modeling engine and includes advanced pattern recognition, "target-based" data mining, heuristic proximity searching and other patent-pending features that allow for fast, accurate and affordable information discovery, search, classification tagging and policy-based management.