When a government investigation is expected or already in process, a company can noticeably affect or reduce the potential costs of giving a response to an eDiscovery or regulatory information request by managing their data in a way that makes it easier to manage and enquiry. Especially for the companies that are regularly involved in eDiscovery, backup precautions can greatly cut eDiscovery costs. There are 3 rules in eDiscovery requests:
- Big amounts of data will be asked for.
- An company’s email will be the main target.
- How a company strengthens the safety of its information and responds to the request can help it win or lose the case.
Electronic discovery (also called e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case.
An great step in getting ready for litigation is to stop deleting all the potentially relevant data as soon as litigation is known. In other words a company should be able to find the information quickly, no matter where is can be kept. If you data is stored in a way that allows you to find the documents you need in a wink of an eye than it can significantly help you to win the process because it will show that your company has no intention to destroy the evidence. Email systems are well-known for letting their users by chance or on purpose delete emails. That’s why email archiving and backup tools are used to ensure safety requirements.
The process of Early Case Assessment (ECA) contains two different facets: calculating the cost and time you need to defend a legal case and quickly finding and analyzing required data from all the sources to develop an eDiscovery plan to best come to a successful decision. It’s pretty clear that the more relevant information a company can find at the early stages the more successful ECA strategy it will have. As a mailbox is almost always the main target of eDiscovery, the chance to access and find email stores is quite necessary for ECA.
Remember, the more data you find at the early stages the more money you will save for defending your case. It will be much easier for you to find the emails you need if you do regular backup and archiving of your Outlook mailbox with applications like Upsafe.