April 2009 – E-discovery is an evolving field that goes far beyond mere technology. It gives rise to multiple legal, constitutional, political, security, and personal privacy issues, many of which have yet to be resolved. Electronic discovery (also called e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. E-discovery can be carried out offline on a particular computer or it can be done in a network. Court-ordered or government sanctioned hacking for the purpose of obtaining critical evidence is also a type of e-discovery.

The nature of digital data makes it extremely well-suited to investigation, as it can be electronically searched with ease, whereas paper documents must be scrutinized manually. The growth in volume of electronically stored information (think at least 1GB of email per employee per year) and changes to rules that guide the discovery process (pdf), have set new expectations for how companies should treat electronic information during the course of a lawsuit. As a result, many organizations find themselves scrambling to locate and preserve email in response to impending litigation, often spending excessively in the course of doing so. Given the complexity involved, it can cost $1,800 to shepherd a gigabyte of email through the discovery process.

There are things you can do, however, to transform e-discovery from a fire drill into a predictable business process. A good start is to be proactive about email archiving to ensure that a comprehensive and centralized record of all email is maintained and accessible to administrators. Setting policies regarding the retention of email is also a good idea. It’s also useful to understand how email archiving fits into the rest of the e-discovery process; a good framework for approaching this can be found in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (www.edrm.net). See how CUC can help you with your e-Discovery requirements here.

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