Companies begin reflection on FRCP eDiscovery and email archiving experiences
February 28, 2008 at 10:21 pm (archive email, business, e-discovery, e-discovery amendments, edd, eDiscovery, electronic communication, electronic data discovery, electronic discovery, electronic document retention, Email Archiving, email litigation, email retention, email storage, foxhollow technologies, frcp, governance, legal, message archiving, news, politics, thoughts)
Paul Korzeniowski of Byte and Switch reports that at least a few small to mid-sized businesses are ready to reflect on eDiscovery and the steps they have taken to successfully comply. Writing about the current state of eDiscovery preparation in American industries, Korzeniowski says: “while many firms, particularly SMB’s, continue to struggle with the FRCP mandate, the ones who’ve managed to institute policies and procedures for the speedy and accurate retrieval of electronic information have a lot to say about what works — and what doesn’t.” Korzeniowski included a section about how medical device supplier Foxhollow Technologies Inc. was forced to integrate an email archiving solution when they became involved in a federal law suit. I am posting an excerpt of this section below because I think it is an important learning opportunity for all U.S. Businesses that are on the fringe of turning to email archiving.
“When IT pros at Foxhollow Technologies Inc., a startup medical device supplier, looked to install email archiving three years ago, management forced the project to the back burner, despite a general lack of email control. “There were users who saved everything and had gigabytes – or more – of email messages,” noted Chuck Arconi, system administrator at the company. At the time, Foxhollow had about 600 employees, but its email system chewed up 400 Gbytes of storage.
Then the other shoe dropped when the company became involved in a law suit. Suddenly, funding for the email archiving project was no longer a contentious issue. ‘The legal department had no problem finding the capital needed to pay for the entire project. In fact, they gave us more than twice as much money as we needed. Before, a paralegal would have to spend two to four hours trying to find the right messages in each mail box. Now the work is done with a click of a button.”
Last month I wrote a blog entry on email insurance and I mentioned the concept of “professional disinterest.” I provided the quote of “when it happens to me, I’ll deal with it.” Foxhollow Technologies illustrates this point loud and clear, as many U.S. Companies are perfectly content waiting for something bad to happen to them before making something important a top priority. Why do they do this? I think it just really takes a wake up call to force people to make decisions most of the time. I think individual case studies are one of the best ways to get people to pay attention and I will try and provide many more of them. Stay tuned.
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