Metadata “is data about data capturing attributes about a computer file such as name, size, date, type, etc.
Metadata “is data about data. Metadata captures data elements or attributes (name, size, date, type, etc.), data about records or data structures (length, fields, columns, etc.) and data about data (where it is located, how it is associated, ownership, etc.).”
There are multiple types of metadata including structural metadata and descriptive metadata. Structural metadata is data about the structure or makeup of the file. Descriptive metadata, which is the type addressed in this article, is information about file attributes.
One of the main benefits of e-discovery software is being able to use search and filtering features. If ESI loaded into e-discovery software has insufficient content or metadata (i.e. just an image of the original file with no text and identifying information), then many features of the software are rendered useless. This means you might as well take a time machine back to 2002 and look at documents one by one because this is exactly what you might have to do if you load documents into an e-discovery review platform without sufficient metadata.
For instance, if you wanted to do something very simple like sort documents chronologically, you can forget about it if metadata is not appropriately preserved. The only date the will likely have is the date on which they were prepared to send to you.