Documenting your e-discovery processes essential to stave off litigation

The analyst believes that businesses of all sizes, and particularly those facing potential legal actions, would benefit from a simple set of practices to follow whenever they need to embark on an e-discovery process quickly. "Addressing the ongoing challenge of the IT perspective of litigation management demands both that the technologies be acquired and that procedures for using them be established," comments Whit Andrews, Gartner vice president. "Companies need to own the products that will be necessary for them to address litigation and understand that those products will not have the same positive impact unless they are supported by repeatable, effective, systemic processes for lawyers and IT to follow," he adds. As usual, Gartner sets out a number of guidelines to make it happen – in this case five, staring with "opening communication wide, and including potential custodians". Gartner, quite simply, makes the point that the legal team and IT must be able to communicate and that at the first threat of litigation, IT and the lawyers must initiate a planned round of meetings "as though the e-discovery phase of litigation were a project with phased deliverables and expectations". The other four: get a senior litigator involved immediately. analyse the corpus of documents and data early, estimate the price scale for collection based on what it will cost to pursue different strategies, and document your decisions.