Introduction
At one time or another, every organization faces litigation, and when it does, your records manage-
ment program will be significantly tested. According to a recent study conducted by law firm
Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP, companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue are engaged in an
average of 147 lawsuits simultaneously, while companies with annual revenues under $1 billion
juggle an average of 37 lawsuits at a time. On top of that, nearly one-third of firms surveyed spent
more than 2% of gross revenues on legal expenses, while 10% spent more than 5%.
While companies in the healthcare, energy and technology industries top the list in the number of
lawsuits, organizations in other fields aren’t immune—and many are completely unprepared. Oper-
ating in today’s litigious environment poses a major test to any organization’s electronic records
management system. Yet a recent Business Performance Management Forum and AXS-One Inc. study
found that 36.4% of senior executives surveyed have no technologies or plans in place to manage a
legal discovery order involving electronic records. Also, 33% said they had no corporate policy in
place covering electronic records management in general, and 20% didn’t even know if they had a
policy.
With the average company creating at least a million e-mail
messages each day, and with over 90% of new corporate data
generated electronically in a wide variety of formats, it is crucial
to have an electronic records management strategy. Because of
the volume of electronic data and its corresponding risks, the
discovery of electronically stored information (ESI) raises
significantly different issues from conventional paper discovery.
In December 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court approved a number of significant changes to the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which demand early attention to the issue of document preserva-
tion, requiring documents to be preserved and presented for discovery “in native format” and “with
metadata intact.” These amendm