TIFF and Load File Support
Litigation Review Databases

This technical note discusses Lexbe Online's support for TIFF images and associated text and load files.

Background on TIFFs and Load-files

TIF or TIFF (“Tagged Image File Format”) is a graphic file image used for online transmission of faxes and in some litigation support document review programs.  As a raster file image, a TIFF is like a picture and ultimately represents dots that form to make up letters or other images.  TIFF files usually do not embed computer readable text, like other text based file formats (e.g., Word, Excel) or a mixed format like PDF, that can include both an image of a document and embedded text.

TIFFs are widely used in first generation litigation support programs like Concordance, Summation and Ringtail.  As these programs were first developed in 80s and 90s, they predated widespread use of the PDF file format.  These litigation databases originally and still make document images readable and searchable by associating a separate text file or database entry with each TIFF image file as part of the software interface.  While TIFFs can be multi-paged, they often are single-paged when used in these programs.

Litigation support 'load files' are ASCII text files that include references to TIFF images of documents (e.g., SMITH 012345.TIF), corresponding text files (e.g., SMITH 012345.TXT) produced using optical character recognition (OCR), document break notation to indicate when documents start and end, and sometimes file metadata for some document types.  The files have specific extensions to specicy the assocated litigation support program: .DAT for Concordance and ,DII for AD Summation.  Load files are needed by litigation support programs that rely on TIFFs to allow the user to search and find corresponding document images.  OCR text alternatively may be included in the load file directly in many of these programs as well, causing the DAT or DII load files to be quite large.

Alternatively, more recently developed litigation document management systems are often file based, rather than single-page TIFF image based.  A file-based litigation document review system is designed to work with each file separately and handles multiple-paged files of many types, including PDF and native files (Word, Excel, etc.). 

Lexbe Online can handle TIFFs with load files, PDFs and over 100 image files, all in the same case for integrated search and review of different source file types.

Support for TIFF and Load files in Lexbe Online

Lexbe Online supports review of TIFF and load files:  

• Lexbe Online supports import using load files from Concordance, AD Summation, Ringtail, Relativity, Catalyst, and other commonly-used litigation support review programs.  
• Information from load files can include Bates numbers, extracted data such as email or file dte, author, recipients, document type and container file associations, coding or tagging, and other file metadata.  All this information can be imported into Lexbe Online.  Following import, the user can filter, sort and search the data.
• The image TIFF files are viewable in the Lexbe Online document viewer and single-page TIFFs are grouped into documents using document breaks from the associated load file.
• Associated extracted or optical character recognition (OCR) text is indexed within the Lexbe Online database and available for search.  If OCR text is unavailable, Lexbe eDiscovery offers the TIFF OCR+ service to create and link OCR to make documents searchable.

Find out more about Lexbe Online, or request and a free trial or demo. 

Options to Convert to Searchable PDF
To make TIFF images more portable, you may consider converting them into multi-paged PDFs.  This approach has the following advantages:

• Document images are retained in the PDF and PDF files are searchable without reference to separate text files.
• All pages in a document are grouped into one file.
• Documents are portable (the 'P' in 'PDF), so users can view the documents on any computer with Acrobat reader, and do not need a license to TIFF-based litigation document management system.
• OCR text in a 'text-under-image' PDF lines up with the visible text directly on the page, rather than in a separate text document. 
• PDFs can be directly annotated using Adobe Acrobat Pro and other PDF editing programs.

Adobe Acrobat Pro and many other PDF programs will convert TIFFs to PDFs in low volumes.  Lexbe also provides a paid TIFF to searchable PDF conversion service called TIFF to PDF+ for jobs that might be too big for you to easily handle.  if you are interested, we would be happy to provide you with a quote. 

Do you have other questions or does this help document not address your needs?  Please let us know at our Support Site.

All services described on this and related pages are subject to Lexbe's Services Agreement.