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Quorum Searching

When researching a new document review platform, check to see if it will allow you to perform quorum searching. Quorum searching involves searching for documents which contain at least a given number of the terms in a list you define. For example, the Sphinx (SQL Phrase Index) a search engine used for SQL databases uses quorum searches which are structured this way:


"default agreement bond equity derivative option instrument" /3


This will find any document that includes any 3 of these words. So if a document contains:


bond option derivative instrument OR

default instrument equity OR

agreement bond derivative


. . . it will come up in the search results, but it will not be found if it contains any number of occurrences of bond AND derivative, or agreement AND bond, and so on.




Sean O'Shea has more than 20 years of experience in the litigation support field with major law firms in New York and San Francisco.   He is an ACEDS Certified eDiscovery Specialist and a Relativity Certified Administrator.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the owner and do not reflect the views or opinions of the owner’s employer.

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