Electronic discovery, or eDiscovery, is the process of identifying and delivering electronic information that can be used as evidence in legal cases. You can use eDiscovery tools in Microsoft Purview to search for content in Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Yammer teams. You can search mailboxes and sites in the same eDiscovery search and then export the search results. You can use Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Standard) cases to identify, hold, and export content found in mailboxes and sites. If your organization has an Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 subscription (or related E5 add-on subscriptions), you can further manage custodians and analyze content by using the feature-rich Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) solution in Microsoft 365.
eDiscovery solutions
Microsoft Purview provides three eDiscovery solutions: Content search, eDiscovery (Standard), and eDiscovery (Premium).
Content Search | eDiscovery (Standard) | eDiscovery (Premium) |
- Search for content - Keyword queries and search conditions - Export search results - Role-based permissions | - Search and export - Case management - Legal hold | - Custodian management - Legal hold notifications - Advanced indexing - Review set filtering - Tagging - Analytics - Predictive coding models And more... |
Content search
Use the Content search tool to search for content across Microsoft 365 data sources and then export the search results to a local computer.
eDiscovery (Standard)
eDiscovery (Standard) builds on the basic search and export functionality of Content search by enabling you to create eDiscovery cases and assign eDiscovery managers to specific cases. eDiscovery managers can only access the cases of which they're members. eDiscovery (Standard) also lets you associate searches and exports with a case and lets you place an eDiscovery hold on content locations relevant to the case.
eDiscovery (Premium)
The eDiscovery (Premium) tool builds on the existing case management, preservation, search, and export capabilities in eDiscovery (Standard). eDiscovery (Premium) provides an end-to-end workflow to identify, preserve, collect, review, analyze, and export content that's responsive to your organization's internal and external investigations. It lets legal teams manage custodians and the legal hold notification workflow to communicate with custodians involved in a case. It allows you to collect and copy data from the live service into review sets, when you can filter, search, and tag content to cull non-relevant content from further review so your workflow can identify and focus on the most relevant content. eDiscovery (Premium) provides analytics and machine learning-based predictive coding models to further narrow to scope the f your investigation to the most relevant content.
Comparison of key capabilities
Capability | Content search | eDiscovery (Standard) | eDiscovery (Premium) | |
Search for content |  |  |  | |
Keyword queries and search conditions |  |  |  | |
Search statistics |  |  |  | |
Export search results |  |  |  | |
Role-based permissions |  |  |  | |
Case management | |  |  | |
Place content locations on legal hold | |  |  | |
Custodian management | | |  | |
Legal hold notifications | | |  | |
Advanced indexing | | |  | |
Error remediation | | |  | |
Review sets | | |  | |
Support for cloud attachments and SharePoint versions | | |  | |
Optical character recognition | | |  | |
Conversation threading | | |  | |
Collection statistics and reports | | |  | |
Review set filtering | | |  | |
Tagging | | |  | |
Analytics | | |  | |
Predictive coding models | | |  | |
Computed document metadata | | |  | |
Transparency of long-running jobs | | |  | |
Export to customer-owned Azure Storage location | | |  |
eDiscovery (Standard) in Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Standard) in Microsoft Purview provides a basic eDiscovery tool that organizations can use to search and export content in Microsoft 365 and Office 365. You can also use eDiscovery (Standard) to place an eDiscovery hold on content locations, such as Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, and Microsoft Teams. Nothing is needed to deploy eDiscovery (Standard), but there are some prerequisite tasks that an IT admin and eDiscovery manager have to complete before your organization can start using eDiscovery (Standard) to search, export, and preserve content.
This article discusses the steps necessary to set up eDiscovery (Standard). This includes ensuring the proper licensing required to access eDiscovery (Standard) and place an eDiscovery hold on content locations, as well as assigning permissions to your IT, legal, and investigation team so they can access and manage cases. This article also provides a high-level overview of using cases to search for and export content.
eDiscovery (Standard) workflow
eDiscovery (Premium) in Microsoft Purview
The Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) solution builds on the existing Microsoft eDiscovery and analytics capabilities. eDiscovery (Premium) provides an end-to-end workflow to preserve, collect, analyze, review, and export content that's responsive to your organization's internal and external investigations. It also lets legal teams manage the entire legal hold notification workflow to communicate with custodians involved in a case.
eDiscovery (Premium) capabilities
eDiscovery (Premium) can help your organization respond to legal matters or internal investigations by discovering data where it lives. You can seamlessly manage eDiscovery workflows by identifying persons of interest and their data sources, seamlessly apply holds to preserve data, and then manage the legal hold communication process. By collecting data from the source, you can search the live Microsoft 365 platform to quickly find what you need. Intelligent, machine learning capabilities such as deep indexing, email threading, and near duplicate detection also help you reduce large volumes of data to a relevant data set.
The following sections describe how these eDiscovery (Premium) capabilities can help your organization.
eDiscovery subscription comparison
The following sections show the minimum subscription requirements for Content search, eDiscovery (Standard), and eDiscovery (Premium). Subscriptions that support eDiscovery (Standard) also support Content search. Subscriptions that support eDiscovery (Premium) also support Content search and eDiscovery (Standard).
Content search
Microsoft 365 E1 subscription
Microsoft 365 G1 subscription
Microsoft 365 F1 or F3 subscription, or F5 Security add-on
Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription
Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription
Microsoft 365 Business Basic subscription
Office 365 Education A1 subscription
Office 365 E1 subscription
eDiscovery (Standard)
Exchange Online Plan 2
SharePoint Online Plan 2
Microsoft 365 E3 subscription
Microsoft 365 G3 subscription
Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription
Microsoft 365 F5 Compliance add-on or F5 Security & Compliance add-on
Microsoft 365 Education A3 or Office 365 Education A3 subscription
Office 365 E3 subscription
eDiscovery (Premium)
Microsoft 365 E5 or Office 365 E5 subscription
Microsoft 365 E3 subscription with E5 Compliance add-on
Microsoft 365 E3 subscription with E5 eDiscovery and Audit add-on
Microsoft 365 G5 subscription
Microsoft 365 G5 subscription with G5 Compliance add-on
Microsoft 365 G5 subscription with G5 eDiscovery and Audit add-on
Microsoft 365 F5 Compliance add-on or F5 Security & Compliance add-on
Microsoft 365 Education A5 or Office 365 Education A5 subscription