eDiscovery and Archiving

Often overlooked when implementing archiving solutions for messaging is the value in reducing the overhead of eDiscovery. This often occurs as archiving is primarily driven by the need to satisfy specific compliance activity for regulatory purposes. However, an archiving solution is much more. Even in light of improving conditions on some legal front, specific to consumer class action pre-trial discovery (see the Wall Street Journal article here), overall the need to be able to produce data for discovery can be overwhelming. This is both from a resource perspective along with the need for assembling the data results into proper format for courts.

As you can from a survey this year by Carlton Fields (see report here) a majority of corporate counsel continue to see at least one class action a year. Those costs run into the billions annually. Tackling eDiscovery costs with your archiving solution comes in two parts, one being the capabilities of the technology and second, the configuration and use of the search and reporting tools available that extend beyond just compliance procedural review.

The Technology of Archiving

This consideration occurs at your due diligence of selecting a solution. It is driven by your messaging need and policy on electronic communications. For example, if your company utilizes email, social media, public web sites and text messaging in your communications day to day – you will need a platform capable of accommodating those message mediums. All of these message types can be considered in discovery requests for electronic records along with the files/documents you may also be producing.

From a complexity perspective, tackling the capture and archiving of these data are ranked below.

Moderate Complexity – Major Discovery Value

The capture of email and web sites has some proven history in business and is straightforward step you can take in securing your archiving for compliance and eDiscovery. It also has major discovery value, as email and web sites are most commonly cited in records requests.

Email is considered the most straightforward, as you can connect your company mail server(s) to an archiving solution to insure constant capture of all email communications, along with attachments and other meta data.
Web sites, likewise, can be directly linked to an archiving solution to capture the web pages and related items (images, files, et al) for archiving.

Higher Complexity – Major Discovery Risk

A more modern communications challenge has been to identify and capture social media posts and text messages for archiving. This content can come from a multitude of devices and sources and requires access to many data connections. Identifying an archiver who can assist you in capturing this data not only streamlines your message archiving needs – but also reduces serious discovery risk.

If you would like to explore how Message Watcher can assist you – contact us for a demonstration and more information.