Production. Court and regulator-ready, signed and hashed.
The final phase is where the work becomes visible to the other side, the court, or the regulator. Everything the practice has done for weeks is judged, in the end, on the production it delivers.
- Phase
- 06 of 06
- Discipline
- Production
- Standard
- ACPO · ISO 27001
Plate · ProductionDeliver in the format the recipient can use.
PD 57AD electronic disclosure, an FCA production, an ICO subject access response, a US-style Concordance load file, a native-plus-metadata regulator drop. Each has its own conventions on bates numbering, redaction handling, family propagation, endorsement banners and native provision. We agree the specification with the receiving party in writing before we build it.
A production is not a copy job. It is a structured export in a specified format, with a load file that maps documents to their metadata, images to their natives, families to their members, and redactions to the pages they cover.
Get the specification right, and the receiving party ingests the production in an hour. Get it wrong, and the first week of the other side's review is spent arguing with your load file.
How production runs on our matters.
- 01
Specification & sign-off
Production specification agreed with counsel and, where possible, with the receiving party. Format, bates prefix, redaction treatment, natives policy, endorsement text, delivery mechanism, all fixed in writing.
- 02
Bates & endorsement
Sequential bates numbering with family integrity preserved. Confidentiality endorsements, produced-by banners and redaction banners applied per specification.
- 03
Redaction burn-in
Redactions burned into rendered images with the underlying text removed. QC pass to confirm no redaction is text-searchable in the produced image.
- 04
Load file assembly
DAT, LOAD, LST, DII or Concordance load file assembled to specification. Metadata fields verified against the coding decisions and family relationships.
- 05
Package & hash
Production package built, SHA-256 hashed and signed. A cover letter records the count, the bates range and any withheld or clawed-back material.
- 06
Delivery & receipt
Delivered by secure transfer or encrypted media, with a receipted transfer note. The receiving party has a single point of contact for ingest issues.
What production produces.
What arrives at the end of the phase, in a form the next phase, or a court, can rely on.
- Structured production package to the agreed specification
- Load file mapping documents, metadata, images, natives and families
- Redaction QC report confirming no leakage of redacted text
- SHA-256 hash and signed cover letter for the package
- Bates range register and clawback log
- Delivery receipt from the receiving party
Where production goes wrong.
The recurring failure at production is under-specification. The specification is agreed by email in loose terms and everyone assumes their reading is the one that governs. The load file does not ingest, redactions turn out to be text-searchable, natives are missing for a class of documents, bates numbers break family integrity, or the cover letter fails to note a clawback. Every one of these is preventable by treating the specification as a document that the parties sign before, not argue about after.
Continue through the workflow.
Bring us in early.
Defensibility is built, not retrofitted.
Whether you are responding to a regulator, preparing for disclosure, or scoping an internal investigation, start the chain of custody with a short, confidential conversation.