Now
is the time to gather your troops! Whether initiating or responding to
litigation, one should assemble a diverse, interdisciplinary team. The
following team members should be consulted both prior to litigation to
lay out strategy and, once litigation hits, to respond in kind to any
discovery requests:
- Compliance Professional. This
person assesses which individuals and what data was involved in the
case at hand as related to the information management procedures that
were or should have been crafted by them. If no policy exists, their
presence here will be to learn what to insert into future protocols to
help minimize costly litigation down the road.
- Counsel.
This member will assess the legality of the cases issues during the
entire litigation and be knowledgeable about the amended Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure, relevant cases and state laws. The attorney must
actualize their in-depth knowledge of the key contested facts along
with probable third-party litigation to draft a thorough and
enforceable litigation hold notice to be sent to relevant parties.
Counsel will also be responsible for contracting outside vendors for
e-discovery work, including collection, processing and review of
electronic data.
- IT Constituent. This
person must be able to pinpoint, gather and safeguard all pieces of
electronic data as requested by counsel. After all pertinent
information has been accounted for, this person will need to properly
protect it over time. In addition, the IT professional should be
someone with great expertise of the company technological
infrastructure and can map the business’ data storage units with ease,
including all servers and email exchanges.
- Records Member.
This individual will aid counsel with any records stored outside and
within the business. The records member should ensure that all relevant
data is properly preserved and stored in a secure location. Records
managers should collaborate with IT to map the content of the stored
data and ensure that all data retention and destruction policies are
being complied with.
Once assembled, this team will allow a business to take the concrete
steps needed to weigh the necessity to preserve data, deal with the
shortcomings of any electronic data systems and reduce any interruption
to ongoing business operations.
Michael Swarz, JD, is based in Los Angeles, California, where he
serves as Vice President of Marketing and Operations for eClaris, Inc.
eClaris is a dynamic electronic discovery consultancy and service
provider dedicated to helping law firms and corporations classify,
process and review electronically stored information. He can be reached
at mswarz@eclaris.com, by phone at 213-840-7109 or through www.eclaris.com.
