In a post this week on Information Week’s Information Management blog, Andrew Conry-Murray provides a case study of why legal departments should work closely with technology professionals from the moment the business or organization is implicated in a lawsuit – even if the entity isn’t even a party to the suit. http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/01/the_6_million_m.html.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) was subpoenaed to provide documents in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac litigation. An OFHEO lawyer agreed to the plaintiffs’ search terms for eDiscovery of backup tapes. The plaintiffs submitted 400 search terms, which yielded 660,000 documents, 80 percent of the agency’s total e-mails. The OFHEO had to hire 50 lawyers to review the documents – many of which were entirely irrelevant – and in the process missed court-ordered deadlines to produce evidence. The court eventually held the agency in contempt, which it appealed and lost. All this cost the agency an unbudgeted $6 million, 9 percent of its annual operating budget.

This eDiscovery could have been avoided had the agency consulted IT professionals at the outset to help define the search terms.  

What is your eDiscovery headache? Let us know and we’ll come up with a solution.