June 25, 2014
This paper was presented by Christine Webber at the National Employment Lawyers Association 2014 Annual Convention, “Blazing the Trail: Courage │Challenge │Change.”
Employer databases contain rich stores of information; understanding how a particular database works and what it contains is the key to unlocking its value as a source of discoverable information.
Before considering common databases in employment litigation, we will provide some down-to-earth explanations of database concepts by examining a something all lawyers are familiar with: billing one’s work. You may not have thought of your time records as constituting a database, but that is exactly what they are. Many of us track our time using practice management software, but database concepts apply equally even if you track your time on paper only. In database parlance, the template or pattern for a time entry is an “object,” and it is generally comprised of several “fields”: the name of the biller, the date the work is performed, the name of the matter, the amount of time, the rate, and a description of the work performed. Each individual time entry that you create is called a “record,” which is a particular instance of the time entry object. The database itself is the collection of all existing time entry records for all cases, for all billers, as well as records for other objects (attorneys, cases, contacts, etc.). When you create an invoice, you are selecting a subset of time entry records from the database for easy presentation to the client or the court. The invoice itself is an example of a “report,” which refers to a snapshot of the database that is used for a particular purpose—here, billing a client. The criteria used to select the pertinent records for a report is called a “query.” By understanding the terms object, record, field, report, and query, you will be well on your way to knowing how to conduct database discovery.
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