Culling applies criteria to remove material from the review population: date ranges outside the relevant period, file types unlikely to contain responsive content, system files, and documents not matching agreed search terms.
Culling decisions and their rationale should be documented.
Alternative Names:
Data Culling, Volume Reduction
Why it Matters?
Culling is where the largest cost reductions occur, since review is the most expensive stage and every document removed beforehand is savings. It is also where defensibility risk concentrates, because aggressive culling can exclude responsive material silently. Documenting the criteria and validating them through sampling of the culled set is what distinguishes defensible reduction from a gap that surfaces later.
Frequently Confused with
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Why is culling the biggest cost lever?
How is culling validated?
