E-discovery challenge

Many corporate counsel consider their company policies and procedures to be unclear and unworkable, with less than one-fifth aware of the existence of policies for collecting and processing data.

Research by KPMG Forensic among more than 200 senior in-house lawyers across the world revealed significant concerns about handling data. 

Half of respondents were concerned about the legal department’s ability to find date and nearly two-fifths admitted it would be difficult to retrieve relevant data in the event of a regulatory investigation or major litigation.

Sixty per cent of respondents had concerns about costs, 56% worried about security issues, and a similar proportion were concerned about records management policies and data volumes.

Counsel felt most confident about dealing with employment and human resources matters and least equipped to cope with competition and
anti-trust investigations.

Communications between legal and IT departments was a major source of concern—more than one-fifth of legal departments were not consulted by IT about changes in storage capabilities, and one quarter are rarely or never consulted about new technologies for dealing with e-discovery.

Paul Tombleson, head of forensic technology at KPMG Forensic in the UK, said: “Companies have to deal with a mind-bogglingly large amount of data being generated every day, which not only has to be stored but made searchable and retrieveable in the future.