System-focused Approach Avoids Faux e-Discovery

Posted by Gregg Mayer on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008   

A recent article by attorneys James Shook and Andrew Cohen thoroughly discusses the problems of companies relying solely on employees to implement a legal hold when litigation is imminent.

Companies reviewing their electronic discovery options are frequently faced with a difficult choice on how to implement litigation holds and collect relevant electronic information. At first glance, the choice seems to be a “Catch-22”: should they: (a) quickly and inexpensively implement an employee self-service approach, and accept the inherent risks of such an approach; or (b) spend time and effort up-front to deploy tools that will systematically allow an investigator or legal team member to identify and collect the information?…[T] here is a significant amount of risk and difficulty hidden in the self-service approach, which can lead to “faux eDiscovery”– where a company incorrectly believes that it is meeting its electronic discovery obligations.

As discussed in the article, it is difficult for companies to rely on employees to preserve the relevant email and other electronically stored information (“ESI”) because an employee’s self interest – such as wanting to avoid revealing an embarrassing email – comes into play. Instead, companies should implement email archiving tools to allow for a system-focused, comprehensive, and cost-effective way to identify and retrieve email in the context of e-Discovery. Read the full article here.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.