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Free CEDS Practice Questions

10 free, exam-style Certified E-Discovery Specialist (CEDS) practice questions with answers and explanations. No signup required. Work through them below, then take the full free CEDS practice test to study every exam domain.

Question 1

A company receives a demand letter from a former business partner threatening to sue for breach of contract unless a settlement is reached within 30 days. No lawsuit has been filed. The company's duty to preserve ESI:

  1. Arises immediately because litigation is now reasonably anticipated based on the demand letter
  2. Does not arise until a formal complaint is filed with the court system
  3. Only applies if the company decides to pursue counterclaims against the partner
  4. Arises only when outside counsel is formally retained to handle the matter
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A - Arises immediately because litigation is now reasonably anticipated based on the demand letter

Question 2

TAR 2.0 (Continuous Active Learning) differs from TAR 1.0 PRIMARILY in that:

  1. TAR 2.0 is less accurate than TAR 1.0
  2. TAR 2.0 can only be used for privilege review, not relevance review
  3. TAR 2.0 continuously selects documents for review without using a separate seed set
  4. TAR 2.0 requires no human review at all
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C - TAR 2.0 continuously selects documents for review without using a separate seed set

Question 3

A custodian receives a litigation hold notice, acknowledges it, but then tells a colleague that they do not think their data is relevant and plan to continue their normal deletion routine. If the legal team learns of this, the appropriate response is to:

  1. Accept the custodian's judgment about relevance
  2. Immediately reinforce the hold obligations and consider active collection to mitigate risk
  3. Wait to see if any data is actually deleted before taking action
  4. Remove the custodian from the hold list since they believe data is irrelevant
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B - Immediately reinforce the hold obligations and consider active collection to mitigate risk

Question 4

In a case with 100 custodians, 95 are routine custodians with no forensic concerns, and 5 are subject to allegations of data destruction. The MOST cost-effective and defensible collection strategy is:

  1. Forensically image all 100 custodians' devices for consistency
  2. Only collect from the 5 custodians with spoliation concerns and ignore the other 95
  3. Use self-collection for all 100 custodians to minimize costs
  4. Use targeted collection for the 95 routine custodians and forensic imaging for the 5 with spoliation concerns
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: D - Use targeted collection for the 95 routine custodians and forensic imaging for the 5 with spoliation concerns

Question 5

A processing vendor applies across-custodian de-duplication and reduces the review population from 800,000 to 400,000 documents. The legal team later realizes they need to determine which custodians had a specific document. This information:

  1. Is automatically preserved in the load file regardless of de-duplication method
  2. Is irrelevant because only the document content matters for legal review
  3. May be difficult or impossible to reconstruct after across-custodian de-duplication
  4. Can be easily retrieved because de-duplication always logs all custodians
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C - May be difficult or impossible to reconstruct after across-custodian de-duplication

Question 6

A 'review universe' of 800,000 documents is prioritized using TAR, resulting in three tiers: Tier 1 (50,000 documents - highest predicted relevance), Tier 2 (200,000 - moderate), Tier 3 (550,000 - lowest). A cost-effective review strategy would be:

  1. Review all 800,000 documents with equal priority
  2. Conduct full human review of Tier 1, sample-based review of Tier 2, and elusion testing of Tier 3
  3. Review only Tier 3 because it contains the most documents
  4. Focus primarily on Tier 2 with minimal review of other tiers
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B - Conduct full human review of Tier 1, sample-based review of Tier 2, and elusion testing of Tier 3

Question 7

A requesting party demands that ALL documents be produced in native format only. The producing party has significant privilege concerns and needs to redact portions of many documents. The producing party's BEST response is:

  1. Propose a mixed production with native format for spreadsheets and multimedia, TIFF/PDF for documents requiring redaction
  2. Agree to all-native production without objection
  3. Produce all documents as paper printouts only
  4. Refuse to produce any documents citing privilege concerns
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A - Propose a mixed production with native format for spreadsheets and multimedia, TIFF/PDF for documents requiring redaction

Question 8

A project involves: collection from 25 custodians at $2,000 per custodian, processing of 500 GB at $25/GB, hosting of 500 GB for 8 months at $10/GB/month, and review of 400,000 documents at $1.50/doc. What is the total estimated project cost?

  1. $662,500
  2. $700,000
  3. $702,500
  4. $652,500
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C - $702,500

Question 9

A US court orders a German subsidiary of a US corporation to produce employee personnel files for US litigation. Under Article 48, the German subsidiary:

  1. Must comply immediately because a US court issued the order
  2. Is exempt from GDPR because the parent company is American
  3. May ignore the US court order entirely
  4. Must identify a valid GDPR transfer mechanism before transferring the data
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: D - Must identify a valid GDPR transfer mechanism before transferring the data

Question 10

An attorney uses a generative AI tool to draft a legal brief that cites several case authorities. The attorney does not verify the citations. Some of the cited cases do not exist (AI 'hallucinations'). This conduct implicates:

  1. Only the AI developer's liability
  2. Only a minor administrative issue
  3. Rule 1.1 (competence) and Rule 3.3 (candor toward tribunal)
  4. No ethical concern because the AI generated the citations
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C - Rule 1.1 (competence) and Rule 3.3 (candor toward tribunal)

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