The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended 18 months ago, requiring that companies have the ability to access quickly an inventory of various electronically stored information in the event of litigation. Yet, a recent online poll, conducted by Deloitte, found that nearly two out of every five executives (39.7 percent) felt that data volumes in the organizations they’ve worked for are increasing in size and becoming unmanageable.
In fact, 17.5 percent of executives surveyed said their companies are not ready to handle complex discovery requests.
Nearly 12 percent (11.8 percent) of companies surveyed have no policy in place to share clear guidance with the IT department and all other employees on document retention and destruction. Another 9.4 percent have no policy in place, but distribute specific directives when litigation arises.
Executive respondents’ greatest concerns about document discovery included: the expense of going through large volumes of files, due to vendor or in-house costs (47.5 percent); damaged productions and exposure to sanctions, due to vendor or in-house error (16.3 percent); and failure to meet deadlines set by the court (12.9 percent).
Some leading practices Deloitte recommends to help companies ease the process of litigation include:
- Prepare and implement an e-discovery program
- In conjunction with counsel create records management policies, procedures and retention schedules
- Map the company’s data system and data source catalog
- Manage and remediate legacy data
- In conjunction with counsel develop a legal hold strategy and process to preserve all forms of relevant information in the face of litigation
- Establish discovery protocol with regulators
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