Latest Articles
- All Relevant Employee ESI Must Be Disclosed
- Law Firm Sanctioned For Email Spoliation
- Carefully Choose Search Protocol In Litigation
- Court Orders Inspection Of Hard Drive After Delays In ESI Disclosures
- Archiving The Internet – One Snapshot At A Time
- Purposeful Email Deletion Results In Sanctions and Scolding
- Finding ESI Search Efforts Unclear, Court Requires More Discovery
- New Article Explores Metadata
- Suspicious Email Results In Dismissal Of Employee’s Claims
- New Opinion Illustrates How Quickly ESI Issues May Proceed in Court
Editor Bio
Gregg Mayer is a journalist and lawyer with a keen interest in the rapidly evolving world of e-Discovery. Gregg has published numerous articles, including writing for law journals and the American Bar Association. Gregg served as editor-in-chief of the Mississippi Law Journal. Before practicing law, Gregg worked as a newspaper reporter for six years.
New Book Offers Basics For A Retention Policy
Posted by Gregg Mayer on Monday, March 17th, 2008
With the increasing business use of electronically stored information (“ESI”), coupled with the burdens of regulatory compliance and e-Discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, CIOs are tasked with crafting effective retention policies for ESI.
A newly released book – designed for law students and lawyers, but offering some practical information for CIOs as well – addresses a whole host ESI issues, including the drafting of a retention policy.
According to New Directions: Social Networks, Blogs, Privacy, Mash-Ups, Virtual Worlds and Open Source (PLI, $199), here are some basic foundations that retention policies should take into account:
(1) state the good faith purpose for its implementation;
(2) designate a person responsible for oversight and implementation, usually within each business unit;
(3) ensure that documents necessary to preserve the entity’s organizational knowledge are preserved and categorized so that they can be retried when needed;
(4) divide each type of document for file into categories and then assign a retention period for each;
(5) comply with statutory or regulatory requirements to retain specific categories of documents;
(6) ensure that the documents necessary to support the entity’s legal position in the event of possible litigation are preserved;
(7) avoid improper destruction or alteration of documents if litigation or a governmental investigation ensues; and
(8) provide for procedures to suspend the policy due to potential investigation/litigation
Of course, all retention policies vary depending on the size of a company and the type of work it does. CIOs should work closely with their legal department and IT staff to ensure a retention policy meets all of the company’s needs.
Just as important as drafting a policy is its implementation. CIOs must make sure their companies are fully following the policy or it will prove of little value if legal trouble ensues.
To check out the table of contents for New Directions, and to order one, visit the PLI site here.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.