As I attend major General Legal Counsel Conferences, during discussions and presentations, it is clear that the cost of e-discovery is of primary concern. So how does an organization lower e-discovery cost? One answer is proper deployment of Electronic Content Management (ECM) and Electronic Records Management (ERM) software. ECM allows for storage, indexing, version control, security and search of documents. ERM enforces retention rules and provides notification when records are ready for disposition.
But what does e-discovery has to do with ECM and ERM? Simply stated, many documents identified through e-discovery could have been disposed of in accordance with their schedules, previous to discovery requirements.
However many organizations still store documents across numerous siloed systems without consistent indexing, security, retention and disposition. Examples include: paper, internal email, external email, mobile devices, email archive, shared network drives, data systems and ECM systems.
Another issue, for organizations that have moved towards ECM is that many of these systems have been deployed at the group level, without coordination and with duplication, or are deployed without ERM modules to help support retention and disposition of electronic records.
How to we help General Legal Counsel? Education showing how proper ECM and ERM deployment can help with e-discovery costs and including GLC as a sponsor or participant in planning for ECM and ERM technologies is a great start.
Cheers
George Dunn, President CRE8 Independent Consultants
Email: consulting@cre8inc.com
Web: www.cre8inc.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CRE8consultants
Phone: 206- 257-7347