Cadence Group Founder and President Tina Teree Baker shares her insights on leveraging e-Discovery products from a recent Chief Litigation Summit in this multi-part series.

This week, I spoke at a national Chief Litigation Summit on the expanded capabilities of e-Discovery product suites and how they can be leveraged to organize shared drives and defensibly cleanup clutter. In a round table discussion with Chief Legal Officers and Litigation Counsel, we explored new strategies for proactive information governance and the role of Litigation.

Despite the recent decrease in the cost of electronic data storage, other costs associated with electronic information continue to rise.  In most organizations –  mid-sized to global, corporate to federal – unstructured data is not effectively managed.  The unnecessary cost of storage, threat of data breach, and risk of e-Discovery are real, as a result of  years of obsolete and duplicative documents on shared drives and a variety of backups.  As piles of electronically stored data continue to grow, compliance and security become increasingly difficult to manage.  Information becomes more and more difficult to effectively retrieve.

The complexity – and volume – of this task can initially seem overwhelming. Don’t sweep it under the rug. Understand how your e-Discovery tools can help eliminate the R.O.T (Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial) data that is slowing your e-Discovery efforts and creating an unnecessary burden for Operations.

Here’s the first thing you need to do:
Review your organization’s Records Retention Schedule to make sure the categories address the information you store electronically (as well as hardcopy) and it is compliant with current laws and regulations.

To learn about what you need to do next, stay tuned for more in our series on how e-Discovery tools can help with proactive information governance by following our blog.  In part 2, we’ll discuss how your e-Discovery tools can facilitate audible destruction.