Electronic Legalities

Bringing Together Legal and IT

Socha says one of the biggest problems he sees in electronic discovery is cover up or flat-out denial by some involved in lawsuits. “Companies think if they just ignore requests for information they will go away,” he says. “But virtually every major electronic discovery case has, as a large component of it, an effort by the party that had problems in the case to try to convince people there was nothing there to look at.”

Lange says the best protection against making damaging mistakes during e-discovery is to conduct a litigation readiness exercise. “The companies that I have seen struggle the most with this are those who haven’t given it a second thought,” she says.

She suggests bringing together a team including in-house and outside counsel, internal IT experts, the CEO, and even compliance officers to run through steps that should be taken in the event of electronic discovery requests. Such exercises can help put triggers in place that will, once a lawsuit becomes imminent, signal employees to immediately stop recycling backup tape, activate e-mail archiving systems, or begin preserving electronic information from key players.

“Attorneys are from Mars and information technology workers are from Venus, so they need to come together to better understand each other’s worlds and start speaking the same language,” Lange says. “If the first time your legal department speaks to your IT department happens after you’ve received a subpoena for information, I can guarantee you things will go badly.”