This is a guest post to WestBlog from Greg Bell, principal attorney editor at Thomson Reuters in Rochester, New York:
I’m here at LegalTech New York to learn about how technology is affecting the litigation process (and to indulge my inner geek to boot…).
Clearly e-discovery has become a focal point of the conference. As I walk through each row in the many exhibitor halls, there are new companies left and right offering this tool or that system that will make e-discovery simple, effective and inexpensive.
Many of these companies focus on dealing with the discovery of electronically stored information after litigation has ensued. The key point in Monday’s keynote, “Enterprise Records and Information Management Considerations” from Fred M. Borchardt, a partner with KPMG who has worked in records risk management for 35 years is that you need to “think left”.
By “thinking left,” Borchardt was trying to focus the overflowing crowd of attendees on the left side of the “electronic discovery reference model” (a flowchart of the key activities and “spaces” within the e-discovery process) to build a proactive and effective records and information management program in the organization.
Borchardt noted that in a lot of organizations, records and information management is characterized by a tendency to view the information in departmental or media-based silos and to hold onto too much information in response to a Legal Hold “just in case.”
There are also inconsistencies of classification and identification as records, non-existent or insufficient search, a lack of understanding in the organization of obligations and policies regarding records retention and management, and ineffective governance and monitoring.
Borchardt set out the main factors for building an effective records and information management program, including:
• The records and management approach must have leadership buy-in. Building an effective program is a change-management process. Leaders have to think and act on an enterprise-wide basis, not in departmental silos.
• Prioritizing is very important. The 80/20 rule is in effect here. (80 percent of the risk is probably found in 20 percent of your records). There is no need to “boil the ocean.” Consider what events and processes in the business demand records, the probability of events, and then determine the scope of the program based on risk and the enterprise’s appetite for risk.
• In assessing the ROI and containing costs, consider reverse engineering a prior production to see what was held and produced that was not necessary and what costs were associated with that unnecessary production.
Greg Bell
Principal Attorney Editor
Thomson Reuters
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