and other IT decision-makers, not to mention the executives who face penalties and loss of reputation.
litigation
preparadness
Compounding Issue
Unfortunately for CIOs hoping for a reprieve, Framingham,
MA-based IDC forecasts the digital universe to post a compounded annual growth rate of over 60 percent from 2008
to 2013 including content which is created, communicated
across multiple devices, replicated, and stored across an
increasingly porous network.
The continued growth dictates that CIOs find ways to
effectively manage the data to meet the corporation’s eDiscovery objectives in addition to its compliance, security, privacy, and retention and destruction requirements. As such,
corporate IT organizations must look for intelligent ways to
meet their operational service levels and cost containment
objectives, while also supporting the data retention, privacy
and eDiscovery obligations of the organization.
Because litigation is inevitable, anything IT and the
business can do to streamline, automate and minimize costs
of discovery has multiple benefits. With classification and
collection as part of an on-premises preparedness approach,
an organization has the flexibility to apply a third-party
solution internally — or externally — to increase efficien-
cies, decrease complexities and lower risks.
Seeking SolutionS
Considering the anticipated growth in data, companies
need to seek and deploy adequate solutions. According
to IDC’s Vivian Tero, corporations need to address this
information problem from a risk management and cost
containment issue.
From the risk management perspective, companies
should:
> Ensure and demonstrate compliance to stated policies;
> Avoid over-retaining of data;
> Guard against mishandling, preservation and
collection, which could lead to fines and sanctions;
> Enable quick response to an event by understanding
the key issues early on, and not resorting to expensive
fire drills each time a litigation event happens; and
> Make informed decisions on appropriate response:
either settle or litigate.
From a cost containment perspective, proactive
organizations will:
> Improve precision and efficacy of information search
and retrieval during discovery so a smaller corpus
is sent to outside for opposing counsel for review,
resulting in lower attorney review docs;
> Utilize software applications capable of providing
advanced analytics, case management, and project
and cost management capabilities.
Tale of Two Companies
It’s easier to understand when taking a look at how differing organizations approach this issue. Take for instance,
a private label pharmaceutical firm with more than 2,000
employees including a healthy number of road warriors.
When the firm’s largest client files a lawsuit, the initial
eDiscovery responsibility falls upon the shoulders of the
organization’s litigation preparedness response manager.
This individual must collect all of the data that will be
relevant to the pending case, starting with identifying all
information relevant to the client.
Understandably, pertinent information will come from
a number of sources including in-house servers, back-up
disks or tapes as well as email communications. There will
also be paper trails including contracts and faxes to collect.
However, where the collection process becomes difficult
involves documents on employee laptops and PCs. At this
stage, the manager must diligently identify which personnel potentially have relevant documents and then request a
legal hold or freeze of each individual’s PC, explains Su.
“The goal is to take a snapshot of the PC or laptop and
see if there is anything that could potentially jeopardize
the organization. Unfortunately, conducting a legal hold
on an employee’s PC can be a very expensive, difficult and
messy task,” she says.
The manager then needs to go through and interview
company personnel to gain an understanding of their
potential involvement in the case. “This step alone is often
a daunting task. If the answer is maybe or yes, you need to
tell the person that you are doing a legal hold of their PC,”
says Su. “This understandably involves a significant number
of interviews, valuable time and legal aspects for the documentation support manager as well as all the employees.”
Exhibit B
The similarly sized financial services firm is on the other
end of the spectrum. Armed with a set of automated collection and analysis tools, the financial services firm has
access to its backed-up information regardless of the data’s
