The previous posts in this series have focused on why modern eDiscovery struggles to explain what actually happened and why inference is an increasingly fragile foundation for defensibility. This post turns from doctrine to practice: a real-world pattern that shows how the context gap appears in modern matters, and how reconstruction-grade context changes the outcome.
The situation behind this familiar discovery problem began with an assignment that seemed routine at first glance. A corporate legal team needed to understand how a set of documents had been accessed, shared, and relied upon during a defined period. The environment was Microsoft 365. The data sources included email, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.
On paper, the scope looked manageable: a defined time window, a known group of custodians, a limited number of key documents. In practice, the questions that mattered were harder to answer. Which version of the document was actually referenced? Who had access at the time, not just in theory, but in fact? How did the document move across shared repositories? What information did decision-makers actually rely on?
These questions did not originate only from the corporate legal team. Outside counsel surfaced them repeatedly during review.
Traditional discovery breaks down when file-focused methods are expected to explain how information actually functioned in the past. What they could not reliably reconstruct was the specific document version referenced in emails and chats, whether linked files had changed before or after they were shared, which custodians actually interacted with the content, or how roles and access shifted during the relevant period.
During review, outside counsel began asking increasingly specific questions: Which version of this file was shared in this email? Can we overlay the contemporaneous version that was referenced into the review database? Do we know whether this document changed after it was sent?
Those were reasonable questions. They were also unanswerable with confidence using traditional discovery artifacts. The files had been collected. But the context that explained them had already been flattened.
Inference widened the scope instead of narrowing it when identification decisions had to rely on assumptions rather than preserved facts. In this matter, identification decisions were initially driven by ownership assumptions, permission models, and present-day directory information. Those signals could not answer what outside counsel was now asking in review.
Without preserved identity over time, observed behavior, and document relationships, the legal team had no choice but to infer. And inference widened the scope. More custodians were added. More repositories were preserved. More data was collected “just in case", not because it was known to be relevant, but because it could not be confidently excluded.
What changes with a Context-Aware approach is the ability to move from static files to evidence that reconstructs what truly happened. Instead of asking “Who owns this document now?” the team could answer “Which version of this document was shared, who accessed it, and how it was relied upon at the time?”
This was possible because context had been preserved as evidence: effective-dated roles and access, observed behavior showing who interacted with content and when, and explicit bindings between messages, links, files, and versions.
When outside counsel asked to see the specific versions referenced in emails and chats, those versions could be identified, not inferred. Review questions shifted from speculation to confirmation.
The impact when precision replaced assumption became clear once reconstruction-grade context was preserved and applied. Key communications were tied to specific document versions. Shared repository activity clarified indirect access. Preservation and collection became targeted rather than expansive.
The team could explain why less was reasonable, and that explanation was grounded in evidence, not volume. Scope was defended by what the collection could prove rather than by how much was collected.
The context gap rarely announces itself. It appears when review questions cannot be answered, when scope expands defensively, and when explanation gives way to assumption. This case hinged on whether the discovery record could answer the questions that naturally arise in review, especially from a case team tasked with understanding what actually occurred.
Context-Aware eDiscovery™ did not eliminate judgment. It eliminated guesswork. That choice, to preserve context as evidence rather than compensate with inference and overcollection, is now available, and increasingly necessary.
This article is part of Cloudficient’s Context-Aware eDiscovery™ series leading up to Legalweek.