The term discovery is used to describe the beginning stage of a lawsuit where the disputing parties are required to produce relevant evidentiary material such as records, documents, and other necessary information that is related to the case.
Electronic discovery — or e-discovery — is the same process applied to information that lives in digital form: emails, word-processing files, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, instant messages, voicemail, audio and video files, social media posts, and the data on mobile devices. Because electronically stored information (ESI) carries metadata about its creation, modification, and transmission, it can be both more powerful and more dangerous than paper records.