eDiscovery Foundations for Litigation Support: The Lifecycle, the Rules, and the Analyst’s Role

Course Overview

Every lawsuit now runs on electronically stored information (ESI): email, chat, documents, phone data, and the systems a business uses every day. Litigation support analysts are the people who find that information, keep it safe, process it, make it searchable, and deliver it to the lawyers and to the other side in a form that holds up. This course is the starting point for that work.

You will learn what a litigation support analyst does in a law firm, at a service provider, and in a corporate legal department. You will learn why ESI is different from paper, how the EDRM 2.0 model (released September 2026) describes the discovery lifecycle, and which federal and Florida rules shape your daily tasks, including the 2025 changes to privilege logs and to Florida discovery. Then you will follow one fictional matter, Acme Contractors v. Globex Logistics, from the first legal hold through collection, processing, search, review, and production. The course ends with the professional habits that keep your work defensible: documentation, confidentiality, and knowing when to escalate. The course is vendor neutral, assumes no prior eDiscovery experience, and prepares you for LGTLS201 and LGTLS202. It is a professional development course and is not offered for CLE credit.

What You Will Learn

• Describe the work of a litigation support analyst in a law firm, a service provider, and a corporate legal department, and the analyst's duty of care.
• Explain how electronically stored information differs from paper records, using metadata, volume, duplication, and volatility as examples.
• Map common litigation support tasks to the stages of the EDRM 2.0 model.
• Identify the federal and Florida rules that control the scope of discovery, proportionality, the discovery plan, the form of production, and the loss of ESI.
• Apply basic legal hold, preservation, collection, and chain of custody steps to a sample matter.
• Explain core processing and search concepts, including deNISTing, deduplication, email threading, hash values, and hit reports.
• Identify the parts of a standard production, including Bates numbers, load files, natives, images, redactions, and the privilege log.
• Recognize when an analyst must document a decision or escalate an issue to the supervising attorney.

Who Should Take This Course

• New and aspiring litigation support analysts
• Paralegals and legal assistants who are moving into litigation support or eDiscovery work
• Law firm IT and records staff who support discovery
• Staff at eDiscovery service providers in their first year
• Corporate legal operations staff who manage discovery vendors

Course Outline

1. Section 1: The Role and the Lifecycle
   • Lesson 1.1: What Litigation Support Analysts Do
   • Lesson 1.2: ESI and Why Digital Evidence Is Different
   • Lesson 1.3: The EDRM 2.0 Model
   • Quiz 1: The Role and the Lifecycle
2. Section 2: The Rules That Shape Your Work
   • Lesson 2.1: Scope and Proportionality
   • Lesson 2.2: The Meet and Confer and the Discovery Plan
   • Lesson 2.3: Form of Production, Lost ESI, and Clawback
   • Quiz 2: The Rules That Shape Your Work
3. Section 3: From Legal Hold to Review Ready
   • Lesson 3.1: Identification and Legal Holds
   • Lesson 3.2: Preservation, Collection, and Chain of Custody
   • Lesson 3.3: Processing Basics
   • Lesson 3.4: Search Basics and Hit Reports
   • Quiz 3: From Legal Hold to Review Ready
4. Section 4: Review, Production, and Professional Practice
   • Lesson 4.1: Review Workflows
   • Lesson 4.2: Production Basics
   • Lesson 4.3: Presentation and Disposition
   • Lesson 4.4: Professional Practice
   • Quiz 4: Review, Production, and Professional Practice
5. LGTLS101 Final Exam (20 questions, 80 percent to pass)

Course Details

• Level: Basic
• Instruction: 70 narrated minutes (1 hour 10 minutes), plus quizzes and a final exam
• Prerequisites: None
• Format: Self-paced online course with narrated lessons, interactive exercises, section quizzes, and a graded final exam

Materials Included

• Student handbook (PDF and Word)
• Quick reference card: the eDiscovery lifecycle from legal hold to production (PDF)

Continuing Education

This course is designed for litigation support and eDiscovery professionals. It is not designed or offered for CLE credit. A certificate of completion documents instructional time for professional development records.

How to Use This Course

• Complete the sections in order; each builds on the last.
• Work through every interactive exercise before taking the section quiz.
• Pass each quiz and the final exam with a score of 80 percent or higher to earn your certificate of completion.
• Keep the student handbook and quick reference card for use in practice.

Current as of November 2026. Product names, vendor policies, rules, and court decisions discussed in this course change; the course is reviewed on an annual cycle.