A survey of US legal departments about electronic data discovery (EDD), conducted by ALM Legal Intelligence for T. Wade Welch & Associates, produced findings in a supplement to the September issue of Corporate Counsel. In a previous post I picked at the sample size, but nevertheless I want to point out the cost-saving strategies listed in a sidebar (at 5). I have quoted the strategies and how many of the 41 respondents selected it, then added a comment or two.
Established records retention policies (16) – you don’t have to discover it if you no longer store it, and see my post collection below
Tracked outside firms’ work and billing (13) – nothing new here
Kept more EDD work in-house (13) – insourcing (See my post of Sept. 12, 2011: comments on other data about this from the same survey.)
Created “preferred” provider programs (12) – like partnering with a few law firms
Invested in technology for processing/filtering documents (9) – fewer brains, more chips
Upgraded EDD and compliance policies (8) – tighten the rules
Used fewer EDD providers (5) – see the preferred provider point above.
As to records retention policies, there have been a smattering of posts here on the general topic of records retention (See my post of April 19, 2006: matter codes and records retention; Jan. 25, 2007: GM and its records retention software; Dec. 23, 2005: law department responsibilities for records management policies; Feb. 6, 2007: data on vulnerability in document retention; Feb. 5, 2007: document retention and destruction; and Aug. 16, 2010: Textron’s litigation group oversees records retention.).