The e-mail’s assembled and accessible. You could begin review immediately, but unless your client has money to burn, there’s more to do before diving in: de-duplication. When Marge e-mails Homer, Bart and Lisa, Homer’s “Reply to All” goes in both Homer’s Sent Items and Inbox folders, and in Marge’s, Bart’s and Lisa’s Inboxes. Reviewing Homer’s response five times is wasteful and sets the stage for conflicting relevance and privilege decisions.
Duplication problems compound when e-mail is restored from backup tape. Each tape is a snapshot of e-mail at a moment in time. Because few users purge mailboxes month-to-month, one month’s snapshot holds nearly the same e-mail as the next. Restore a year of e-mail from monthly backups, and identical messages multiply like rabbits.
