Defending Against Lawsuits

C-Level executives must work together to protect their companies from prohibitive costs, catastrophic risk and over-burdened internal resources stemming from legal proceedings.

C-level executives strive to protect their companies from lawsuits and regulatory proceedings, but lawsuits are part of business, so the C-suite needs to be prepared. CEOs must protect their organization’s reputation and reduce shareholders’ risk, CFOs must control costs and CIOs must effectively manage the growing mountain of discoverable data within their enterprises.

To protect their companies from prohibitive costs, catastrophic risk and over-burdened internal resources stemming from legal proceedings, the C-suite must understand the legal discovery process. This is critical, as the amount of electron-ically stored information (including e-mail, instant messages, blogs, tweets and texts) is growing exponentially, and courts are becoming intolerant of incomplete or late discovery responses and are imposing sanctions more frequently for discovery negligence. Simultaneously, boards of directors are increasingly demanding greater accountability from the C-suite.

E-discovery can be expensive, although many companies are minimizing this with proactive preparation. Organizations can save time and resources during discovery by determining where documents are located, reducing the data-storage footprint and implementing storage policies. Throughout the current recession, however, many organizations have deferred the investments needed for these proactive steps so as to save up-front costs.

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Source: baselinemag.com
By: Jeffery Fehrman