How to Meet Ediscovery Requests With Archived Email
For large corporations, getting involved in a lawsuit used to necessitate a mountain of paperwork. The discovery phase no longer revolves around important documents because so many businesses have gone paperless or nearly so.
Even though they are permitted by law to request and receive correspondence in certain types of lawsuits, attorneys on the opposing side still want to keep track of all correspondence that might be relevant to the case.
When it comes to business-to-business and client-to-business correspondence, email has become the norm rather than the exception.
As a result, more and more requests for discovery include any and all emails that may lead to crucial case information.
Because of this, a lot of business owners don’t like the idea of retrieving a lot of emails that could go back years and relate to issues that could lead to a lawsuit.
Several state laws and federal regulations mandate email retention compliance. Companies confronted with ediscovery requests in a lawsuit have three basic options: Utilize archiving technology to comply before a problem arises, perform manual searches, or disobey the request and risk legal repercussions.
Archive Mail Management The majority of businesses will eventually find themselves involved in at least one lawsuit.
A business can save money and time by using a dependable archive with the most recent technology that makes it possible to quickly and completely comply with court requirements for emails.
This can also increase the company’s chances of winning a lawsuit. Email archiving technology can effectively parse and accurately produce the required files for any size business.
The data is stored in a record on a hard drive by one form, while it is sent to a cloud-based virtual server by another.
Manual Searches In discovery recovery, one option is to appoint a few people to search email records for production compliance.
Depending on the length of the timeline and the number of computers that need to be searched, this may take hours or even days.
Non-compliance Although avoiding legal discovery requests or hiding information may be more appealing than putting in a lot of time and effort to produce the material, the repercussions can be severe and costly.
Sanctions, fines, and contempt charges can result from failing to comply with the requirements of the email retention law and discovery requests. It may even lead to the dismissal of the case for plaintiffs.
The court may, in some instances, let the other side conduct the search on their own, opening doors that the other side would prefer to keep closed.
The cost of the opposing side’s time and effort billing is certain to be high as well. At some point, the correspondence and documents that comply with the guidelines must be produced.
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