May/June 2009 / E-Discovery
Five Steps That Overcome Common Legal Hold Mistakes
Implementing a litigation hold on potentially discoverable information can be a major challenge, especially in larger organizations, where relevant information may be in various forms and spread over many locations. Identify potentially relevant data systematically and early to avoid defaulting into a “save everything” mode. Decisions about which data or data categories to hold, and in which time frames, will be based on how the company is organized into divisions, the nature of the matter and which employees are potentially implicated.
This is one corporate project that definitely should be handled “top-down” from the most senior company levels, according to the authors. Notification should go out essentially as an order to all who might have potentially relevant data, making clear the seriousness of the legal issues and providing a contact for people who have questions. Legal departments and IT need to work together and “speak the same language.”
A defensible litigation hold strategy, the authors write, “is a consistent and repeatable process” that will preserve and make potentially available all relevant information.” The goal is “to transform the issue from a legal quandary to a business-process concern.”
Laura M. Kibbe is the Director of Electronic Discovery Services for Thomson Litigation Consulting. She was formerly senior corporate counsel at Pfizer.
Bobby Balachandran is the CEO of Exterro, Inc., a provider of workflow technology and automation solutions for legal-hold and discovery management.
