San Francisco, CA - January 30, 2004 - Summation® Legal Technologies, Inc., developer of America's leading Litigation Support Software system, announced today the upcoming release of iBlaze® Version 2.6, featuring a new dimension in electronic evidence management. Summation iBlaze seamlessly batch imports electronic evidence acquired and processed by service bureaus in both native electronic and image formats. The nucleus of the new import capability is Summation's eDII format, which now embeds extracted text into the eDII file. Summation's enhanced eDII import facility in iBlaze Version 2.6, together with DocuLex's Discovery Cracker Version 4.5, facilitates this expanded processing and loading of electronic evidence and images into Summation iBlaze.

Discovery Cracker Version 4.5 includes refined utilities for exporting processed electronic discovery in eDII files and content media that can be seamlessly batch loaded into Summation. Other vendors are following Discovery Cracker's lead in this mode of electronic evidence processing. Clients can thus take advantage of iBlaze Version 2.6's modern facilities for reviewing, searching, and producing native format electronic evidence files or electronic files converted via service bureau imaging and text extraction processes.

While Summation's popular eDiscovery console gives law firms the capacity to internally process common forms of native electronic evidence (e.g., Outlook email mailboxes, Lotus Note email mailboxes, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and individual native eDoc files), service bureaus provide a much broader spectrum of electronic evidence processing capability for large volumes. For example, many electronic evidence service bureaus provide:

• High quality processing of large volumes of Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes email.
• High quality processing of large volumes of native-file formatted electronic documents.
• Large volume de-duplication.
• First order winnowing via key word and concept filtering engines.
• Content text, embedded text, fielded data and metadata extraction.
• Large volume "petrification" (conversion to image file formats) for review, redaction or presentation.
• Customizable spreadsheet processing options.

Service bureaus that have either upgraded to Discovery Cracker Version 4.5, or developed their own Summation compatible utilities, can now empower their customers to effectively handle, not just survive, the explosion of electronic evidence in day-to-day litigation and regulatory matters. With the Discovery Cracker or other Summation compatible utilities, service bureaus can export processed eDiscovery into an eDII file. Summation's import eDII dialog batch loads the eDiscovery processed in any of the ways set forth below:

• Class I format: Convert electronic documents to images and extracted text. This paradigm has been available with Summation products and other conventional litigation support products for years. iBlaze Version 2.6 brings the scanned paper paradigm in-line with the realities of email management by providing service bureaus a means to pass on parent-child relationships (i.e. email message with attachments) into iBlaze. The litigation team can then take advantage of Summation's unique Include Family Summaries feature. When a search for documents satisfying a request for production yields only a portion of the family members (e.g. only the second email attachment contains the search terms), iBlaze with a single-command expands the search set to include all of the family members that comprise the full email (e.g., parent email message, sibling attachments, etc.). This unique Include Family Summaries feature ensures that a production set is complete. In addition, extracted text processed by the service bureau is directly imported into Summation's ocrBase for searching.
  
  
• Class II format: Export Native formatted email and native file formats. Summation iBlaze has the ability to manage, display, index, and search electronic documents in their native file format, including the capacity for "pass through" and "reach back" native file production. Many forensic experts are touting native file capture as the most cost-effective way to review and winnow electronic documents. Summation's native electronic document redaction feature allows protected documents to be "petrified" within Summation and partially redacted, as well as privileged documents to have a placeholder in a produced native file (e.g., an .msg file for emails where some of the attachments are protected and others aren't). Options also include extracted text to take advantage of the OCRbase annotation facility.
  
  
• Class III format: The aggregation of Classes I and II, for the ultimate flexibility in managing electronic evidence in tandem with paper-originated evidence scanned and OCR'd into Summation's imaging system.

Key EDD features and enhancements in iBlaze Version 2.6 include:

• Search, retrieve, view, analyze and manage native file based email and electronic documents alone, or in tandem with, paper or image based documents, transcripts, issues and events.
  
  
• Filter and search email, attachments, or electronic documents alone, then expand search results to include family summaries.
  
  
• Flexible production tools to allow document production as native files, converted images, or mixed media - including the option to use our increasingly popular briefcasing technology. Briefcasing features include delivery of production briefcases as SBF files, or Browser Briefcases for production set review by those have do not have Summation but do have Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Summation iBlaze Version 2.6 will be available February 17, 2004, and thereafter will be shipped to Summation maintenance customers. It includes the Summation eDiscovery Console for processing electronic evidence.

For details, visit Summation Legal Technologies and Doculex at the New York LegalTech Conference on February 2-4, 2004 at booths 134-135 (Summation) and 3109 & 3111 (Doculex). Location and information about the conference may be found at http://www.legaltechshow.com.