Legal coding is the process of creating summary or keyword data from a document. It is widely used in the legal profession to create a fast-search index or database of documents for use in litigation.

Objective Coding Definitions

• The recording of basic data such as date, author, or document type, from documents into a database.
• Extracting information from electronic documents such as date created, author recipient, CC and linking each image to the information in pre-defined objective fields. In direct opposition to Subjective Coding where legal interpretations of data in a document are linked to individual documents. Also called bibliographic coding.
• Extracting such information from a document as its author, its mailing date, etc. Objective coding is usually done from the document text or image, because the metadata may be inaccurate. For example, a document written and signed by a partner might show the administrative assistant as the author in the metadata, because it was originally typed on the assistant's computer.