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eDiscovery: Companies are not Prepared
Contoural and Osterman Research have released a report finding that most companies are ill-prepared for addressing the challenges of eDiscovery. Only 6 percent of the companies responding felt that they confidently could meet and respond to any questions that might be brought forward related to an eDiscovery request, while 69 percent of the companies felt that they were not well prepared. The survey was given to 100 IT managers of large and medium sized companies.
More than half of the companies felt that they would not be in a position to enforce a litigation hold. A ‘litigation hold’ means that once a request for information is made the company is obligated to suspend the retention and destruction policy for any documents that may be relevant to the request.
40 percent of IT managers felt that they have not received sufficient guidance about how to address eDiscovery requests. It is important for both IT and legal groups within a company to work closely together to create a policy for how best to address eDiscovery.
How can you prepare? At the heart of any policy to address eDiscovery is records management and records retention principles. It is also important that the company have a clear data map of where important information in the company is being stored and archived. Using document and data management solutions can address much of the problem. Email is often a special consideration. Any type of document can be considered critical, but email often presents unique management difficulties, and the process used for managing email data should be carefully reviewed.
The first step in successfully addressing eDiscovery is making sure that the planning and implementation of good processes are done well before the eDiscovery request is ever made.
