While legal departments are driving the strategy for the acquisition of tools and services to support compliance conformity and litigation preparedness in most enterprises, the process is too often ad-hoc, reactive, and very costly. Many general counsels find that their e-discovery and retention costs are continuing to escalate beyond what they had anticipated even after implementing solutions intended to reduce risk as well as expenses.
A large part of the problem is the lack of available, proven NextGen solutions to properly address the shortcomings of existing FirstGen systems including issues with scalability and performance, integration of modules, poorly conceived architectures and less-than-stellar search and auto classification capabilities. Legal departments, along with representation from IT, Records Management, Compliance, Risk Management and HR departments need to create a business case for proactive investment rather than being stuck in a reactive expense mode.
Since legal owns the budget in most cases, it should also own the process. Managing policies and litigation activities is essential, but more could be done to further mitigate risk and expenses. A first step that doesn’t get enough attention is reducing the sheer number of emails created by encouraging better electronic communication skills and behavior. Imagine reducing unstructured ESI output by 20% without compromising productivity or collaboration, as some firms claim they have done.
Action Item: After taking stock of your existing archiving and retention environment and setting some reasonably attainable objectives, start building the business case around investment in NextGen solutions and architectures. Assume most of the technology you have in place is tactical rather than strategic and that the major vendors in the space know it and are working on replacing their existing offerings. Review solutions from niche and start-up vendors who have been working on solving many of the architectural and technical shortcomings of FirstGen offerings, such as lack of distributed control and improved categorization, as they may be able to bridge a gap to the next generation.
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