Getting the Geeks to Reboot

As the CIO of our firm (I prefer “Head Geek”, thank you very much) I see the time, effort, and money that is being spent on E-Discovery issues and wonder where this is all really going.  I see lawyers trying to wrap their minds around technology concepts in order to comply with the FRCP rules and navigate their way through the process in the best interest of their clients.  It is also apparent to me that the IT practices and policies of a business (or lack there of) can have an enormous effect on the potential cost to that business should they be required to produce ESI.  It’s also clear that IT staff need to know and understand the role that they play in minimizing potential exposure in this area.

The more I learned about the process that was taking place and the issues our legal teams were experiencing, the more I began to think about what an IT department should do to proactively set the table should the need to execute a Litigation Hold or produce information arise.  What is it that I would need to know about the process and what may be asked of me to comply with the FRCP rules?  What are my obligations and, yes, my liabilities for not being educated and informed?  Generally speaking, IT people don’t like to lose stuff and we’re pack rats to a fault.  We take great pride in being able to “find” that missing email or restore that corrupted document to the great amazement of our “clients.”  But what impact does that sort of thinking have if we are the subject of litigation?

Despite the desire to never lose anything, how much “pack ratting” is too much?  What is the real purpose for such things as backup tapes?  At what point does my “test environment” come into play as it relates to discoverable information?  Are my company’s documents organized and easily searched?  How do Blackberry or iPhone devices impact the process?  Do flash drives serve a useful purpose or do they scare the heck out of me when I look at them from a discovery point of view?  Am I liberal with the amount of email I allow my employees to store on our email server or am I being short sighted by forcing them to archive their email to the hard drive of their PC or a network location so that the email can keep flowing?  Have I allowed so much data sprawl on my network that I don’t know where anything is stored?  Do I even know that the term spoliation doesn’t have anything to do with that Twinkie I’ve had sitting in my desk drawer for who knows how long?  Overwhelming for this geek brain….

So out of all of this mess and a few gallons of coffee came some clarity.  I knew that the best way to set the table for E-Discovery preparedness is for IT teams to understand where the lines cross between offering solid technology service, meeting business needs, and being mindful of potential obligations should a litigious situation arise.  The importance of  understanding what spoliation is, knowing what a Litigation Hold is and what it means, and  having a plan in place to execute it correctly should the time come will pay huge dividends.  It’s another way of thinking about your technology going forward — but nothing that a reboot can’t fix.