One of the first instructions that IT practitioners will hear from the legal department is “preserve everything”. It doesn’t matter what the context is or whether the information may or may not be relevant, at the first pass a lawyer will always tell you to preserve everything in sight. The problem with preserving information is that preservation is only half the battle – you need to be able to make use of it somewhere down the line and that’s a fact that sometimes gets lost in the shouting.
We often run into conflicts created by the identification and retention of data when working between the Legal and IT departments at client locations. Lawyers will be looking for the widest possible retention policies and practices. They do not realize that overly broad retention efforts may have a negative impact on the daily operations within IT. On the other hand, many lawyers just don’t care if that does happen. They have gone to multiple eDiscovery conferences where it has been drilled into them that if they allow their IT people free reign, the data will be deleted, the case will be compromised, their hair will fall out and their yearly bonus will go “poof” (again). Consequently, their only response to every matter will be to invoke their best James Earl Jones impression and intone “Keep EVERYTHING”.
IT people, on the other hand, are convinced that lawyers exaggerate everything. If you listen to the lawyers, the sky is always falling. You’re always “betting the farm” or engaged in some other similar process that is intended to let you know that Armageddon Is Here (again). IT feels that those dudes in Legal are just too highly strung. After all, every time they see a lawyer come running into the IT department, he has his tie and collar open, is red faced, puffing from running too far and trying his damndest to wheeze out that feeble Darth Vader impression. It’s really sad, especially since the lawyer should know that IT people spend their off hours in multiplayer online games dispatching Evil Overlords just for kicks. For them, neutralizing one pudgy lawyer is a snap.
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Source: eDiscovery Journal
By: Kevin Esposito
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