Guidance Software, a provider of digital investigations solutions, announced Version 4 of EnCase e-Discovery, providing legal and IT teams with a single integrated software solution that delivers all of the functionality that companies desire for in-house electronic discovery.

Key features of Version 4 include:

• Legal Hold: providing hold notification, including reminders and online custodian interviewing, with customizable questions, and with legal hold data (status of hold, answers to questions, etc.) stored in the same case database used to track collection, processing, analysis, and first-pass review activities.

• Pre-Collection Analytics: enabling data maps of potential custodians to be created prior to collection, processing, or analysis, so that counsel can understand the data universe before discovery begins.

• Identification, Preservation, and Collection: enabling rapid, targeted data collection and preservation from laptops, desktops, servers, and content management systems, while preserving collected data in EnCase’s famous “evidence file” format.

• Processing, Analysis, and Early Case Assessment: enabling filtering of data at any stage in the electronic discovery process; features include e-mail threading, full audit trail of search history, display of unique documents per keyword or search expression (to enable keyword negotiation), export to PDF format, and more.

• First-Pass Review: including content viewing in a browser window, with hit highlighting, fully customizable tagging and classification of data, and an audit trail for defensibility.

Rather than companies trying to integrate incompatible point solutions for each discrete step in the electronic discovery process, Version 4 of EnCase eDiscovery offers a single, fully integrated solution that maintains and protects case and custodian data throughout the process, thereby reducing risk and lowering costs.

In contrast to other products, in which analysis and review can be performed only after collection and processing is complete, EnCase eDiscovery’s new analysis and first-pass review capabilities can be utilized at any stage of the electronic discovery process, such as during collection, post collection, or during and after processing.

Coupled with its unique pre-collection analytics capability, which allows “data maps” to be quickly created, EnCase eDiscovery is designed to enable companies to rapidly understand case facts, better prepare for “meet and confer” conferences, negotiate keywords, and perform first-pass review in-house to reduce data sets prior to outside attorney review, thereby increasing speed and reducing cost.

Because the analysis and first-pass review capabilities are Web-based, attorneys and paralegals can test keywords, view data, and tag documents from their desktops or laptops, without having to install any software to do so.

Version 4 of EnCase eDiscovery will be demonstrated at LegalTech in New York from Feb. 1-3, and is expected to be generally available in the second quarter of 2010.