Are you prepared to respond effectively to eDiscovery requests?

For many organizations, the growing impact of litigation is rapidly becoming one of the most critical issues facing business, reverberating from the legal team through the CEO’s office. As expanded compliance and regulatory requirements increase the pressure, organizations find themselves facing substantial costs in responding effectively to litigation related discovery requests. At the same time as electronic information and communication are exploding in usage, compliance and discovery requirements are demanding increased discipline in retaining, tracking, discovering and managing all electronic information – challenging even for the most advanced corporate information infrastructures. Worse, organizations are confronted with significant risk, fines and negative public exposure should they lose or mishandle electronic evidence for a case. To be prepared to handle your current and future litigation demands, your organization is being compelled to take a hard look at its eDiscovery readiness, and to address several key questions:

• Are you prepared to respond effectively to eDiscovery requests?
• Can your organization identify and deliver all the emails and documents requested if a lawsuit or regulatory investigation becomes a possibility – even if those emails and documents go back three, five, or more years?
• Can your organization discover and produce this information quickly enough to meet the compressed timelines demanded by recent changes in key regulations?
• And finally, will your organization be successful in navigating the eDiscovery minefield, avoiding the fines, sanctions and damage to your corporate reputation that have plagued some of the most respected companies over the past few years?

How would your organization respond to these questions? Most organizations today cannot answer all these questions with an unqualified “yes.” They are forced to manage risk by handling incoming litigation related discovery demands in a reactive manner, engaging high-end legal service providers or deploying short-term point solutions to manage eDiscovery on a case-by-case basis. For these organizations, this reactive approach results in huge bills and redundant work as the same information might be repeatedly discovered across different cases.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Leading organizations have recognized that by proactively addressing eDiscovery and making it part of a standard, consistent business process; they can drive down costs, improve agility and responsiveness, and get ahead of challenges by quickly assessing cases internally and preemptively deploying the best legal strategy. For these organizations, the key to proactive eDiscovery is a powerful and proven infrastructure to manage and collect electronic information coupled with tools to automate the phases of the eDiscovery processes in the context of a consistent, well-managed business process. This approach enables you to get ahead of the curve, dealing with litigation today while preparing your organization to be more proactive in time. This document will provide the information and describe tools that will enable you to begin implementing an eDiscovery strategy, taking control of cost and risk and turning electronic discovery from a terrifying prospect into an operationalized, routine business process.

And at the same time, these tools offer the value-add proposition of “knowledge management,” creating the foundation of an information agenda for corporate legal and compliance teams that helps ensure that only the most current and correct information is maintained and used for future decision-making.

Let's get the conversation started about search and eDiscovery, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.