Of all the electronic discovery stories, those involving e-mail are the most captivating, prompting head scratching and questions such as, "I can't believe they deleted those e-mails," and "Why didn't they keyword search for that message?" But those questions become less amusing if the stories involve a lawyer or his own clients. Protecting clients' interests means ensuring that they have a coherent e-mail retention policy in place.
E-mail has become indispensible in virtually all organizations, businesses and government. E-discovery exposes how people manage these records, and lawyers commonly discover their clients retain costly and useless e-mail while failing to identify or preserve essential messages, the absence of which can lead to sanctions. All the while the volume of e-mail grows. Based on its business-user survey, technology market research firm Radicati Group Inc. estimates that the average user in 2008 processed 140 e-mails per day, up from 75 e-mails per day for the average 2005 user.
Just as binge eating can lead to purging, fasting or overexercise, clients' ravenous e-mail accumulations often result in unhealthy compensatory behaviors. Commentators, experts, IT professionals and records managers are divided on almost every approach to managing, retaining or deleting the rising tide of e-mail, which has caused a collective paralysis.
The stakes are high for any organization that does not gain control of its e-mail proliferation. It is the wild card in every e-discovery process. If an organization is willing to address its use and management of e-mail, however, its attorney can use these three guiding principles to ensure success.
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Source: Law.com
By: Richard Alexander
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