by Barry Murphy.

At the AIIM show in mid April, Xerox Global Services gathered a number of information management industry pundits to talk about issues related to eDiscovery. The conversation shed light on myriad issues that organizations face to meet the requirements of the newly amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). You can listen to a podcast of the discussion here.  The major points of note:

  • Organizations need formal, cross-functional teams to manage eDiscovery. Too often, eDiscovery is managed in a legal vacuum or worse, it gets thrown over the fence for IT to handle without much legal input. There is no question that both sets of expertise are important and formalizing such a team gets input from both departments (and budget from both departments).
  • Organizations need to better manage the relationship with the law firm. Some organizations have their law firm choose, purchase, and manage the technology infrastructure for eDiscovery.  This might work for SMBs, but not for large enterprises that should own this infrastructure.
  • eDiscovery is a primary driver of short-term information management initiatives. Spending driven by the FRCP changes is not hype. All the pundits agree, and my inquiries with clients backs it up, that organizations are spending big dollars today to improve eDiscovery and stop hemorrhaging money – one organization reports spending $8 million per month on eDiscovery (and that is what they know they are spending…it doesn’t include the hidden costs).