Let The Sun Shine On E-discovery

Be Smart When Storing Data In The Cloud

 Want to really irritate a judge? It’s easy: fail to produce documents required for a legal proceeding. Finding and producing such documents is known as “discovery” in the civil litigation world. And it becomes “e-discovery” when you are dealing with documents that are stored in an electronic form rather than on paper.

When you store data in the cloud and that data becomes needed for a legal proceeding, however, the risk of judicial annoyance rises. A cloud data storage provider may be unwilling to produce your data and return it to you. Or the provider may not be able to complete the task, even if it’s willing. You may unwittingly contribute to the problem by moving data to the cloud in an unsystematic way, making it harder to find and search.

If you don’t cough up required information, judges can penalize you with everything from fines to jail time. Judges can rule against you in a court case. If you want to store data in the cloud, think about whether it makes sense in terms of your litigation risks. If it does, you need a plan.

E-discovery & Cloud Data Storage

The way in which many enterprises store their data in the cloud isn’t conducive to finding or retrieving that data later. “Companies don’t know where their data is, what’s in it, or how long it’s being kept,” says Bennett B. Borden, a partner in the Williams Mullen law firm and chair of its e-Discovery and Information Governance Section. This uncertainty regarding data can create serious problems when a judge issues a discovery order, the data you need is off in the cloud somewhere, and you can’t find it.

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Source: processor.com
By: Bridget Mintz Testa