Businesses Generally Ignoring E-Discovery Rules

eweekhickins writes "A full year after the institution of new federal e-discovery court rules, only a minority of companies are paying attention. Keeping track of every IM, email, and document for a court order that may never come must seem like a tall order. Researcher Michael Osterman said that only 47 percent of companies have some kind of e-mail retention policy in place. 'I don't think it's difficult to understand the rules,' Osterman told eWEEK. 'I just think that it sometimes takes headline shock to make people move on some things.'"

Or Maybe

[Atomm]

it is a bad law that failed to consider the impact it would have on business to actually implement the requirements.

Is this ALL companies

[doroshjt]

Is law for all companies or just Public corporations? Seems an excessive burden to put on small businesses?

Too Expensive

[pickapeppa]

This kind of archiving would be nigh impossible for some businesses, no matter how heavily regulated. Its partially a matter of resource allocation. I do a nightly backup and a monthly backup for an organization that deals with kids, medical records, and large donations (i.e. heavily scrutinized). 80 percent + of donations must be spent on program services, so I have a limited budget. If something is written and deleted betwixt the monthly backup and the earliest nightly, its gone. There's no practical way for me to keep all that data on hand. I recycle the backup tapes and burn DVDs. If I bought enough tapes to keep an independent backup of each day's activity, there'd be no room in my office for me. Nor do I want to spend money on some kind of IM tracker. If I did, those kids with medical conditions would suffer. Sorry lawyers, you'll have keep doing things the ol' fashioned way

The pains of E-Discovery Rules

[HeliosTrick]

I'm the sysadmin at a lawfirm in the Chicagoland area, and we've been following these guidelines for a couple years. However, it is quite a hassle, even though we only have 150 employees. We keep tape backups on a rotating 14-day schedule, with End of Month and End of Year retains kept indefinitely - offsite in a fireproof safe, natch. The amount of storage space we need will soon require us to move from LTO-2 to LTO-4 format and buy an even larger safe.

Most companies may not need to follow these guidelines, but in the legal industry we're literally in court all the time, and it's in our best interest to do so - regardless of headaches it may cause. :)