Beyond the buzzword: Helping IT avoid the e-Discovery hot potato
Posted by Nick Mehta on Tue, Nov 18, 2008 @ 06:00 PM
Bob Spurzem at Ferris Research has a good post on their blog about how IT departments should try to remove themselves from the day-to-day e-Discovery process by implementing an email archiving solution. Realistically, there is nothing good that comes from being involved in a lawsuit, so IT folks are eager to hand off the responsibilities to legal if they can.
As Spurzem states:
It's much better if searches can be performed by users--the human resources (HR) department, legal, or compliance officers--rather than email administrators, because:
- People who perform the email search have certain legal responsibilities. Depending on the nature of the investigation, they may be required to provide testimony in court or in a deposition, regarding the exact nature of the search they performed.
- Users who understand the purpose of searches and the context of the matter are better equipped to conduct searches.
Email administrators should maintain control over the email archiving solution. They can assist in preparation of the data and in the packaging of the search results, but they should not be involved in the actual search and the analysis of the search results.
Software-as-a-service email archiving solutions can help deliver on this promise of removing IT from the E-Discovery process. Why?
It's hard to predict the demand for searches in an archival system. During normal times, you may have infrequent searches but during a litigation event, you may get tons of searches that are time-sensitive.
Many customers of on-premise email archiving products start with the vision that they'll turn the search interface over to legal and "let them have at it." Unfortunately, IT often finds itself having to manage searches to make sure the searches aren't overwhelming the system at any given point. For example, if there is a big discovery matter, they need to make sure other searches aren't slowing that important search down. So typically IT ends up running the searches themselves and are "stuck in the middle" (to quote the Stealers Wheels song) of the e-Discovery process.
In contrast, because of our cloud-based infrastructure, we scale up and down to meet client search needs without any effort for the customer. IT can give their legal team the LiveOffice Mail Archive interface for searching with confidence, knowing that searches will continue to be fast.
In addition, some of the legacy on-premise products have search interfaces that are designed for high-end customers and are thus very complex. So it's tough to put the offerings in front of legal departments - they just don't get how to use the product. Again, IT is left to babysit the searches.
Get IT out of the e-Discovery business. It's good for your company, good for your legal team and good for your sanity.