Legal Hold Management Within a Law Department - ILTA 08

Transcription

1 Legal Hold Management Within a Law Department - ILTA 08 Liz Schimmel, Discovery Manager Woods Abbott, Senior Manager, Legal Operations

2 Introductions Liz Schimmel, Discovery Manager, Halliburton Prior to joining Halliburton in April 2006, Liz worked at EDS Corporation in the Litigation Department for over 20 years. While a senior litigation paralegal at EDS, she worked on complex commercial litigations involving the hearth care industry and government contracts, managed the matter management system for the Litigation Department and worked extensively on audit and compliance issues relating to litigation. She has been involved in e-discovery issues for more than 10 years.

3 Introductions Woods Abbott, Senior Manager, Legal Operations, Raytheon Woods is the Senior Manager of Legal Operations for Raytheon Company (RTN: Fortune 100). He is primary responsibility for all the legal technologies utilized by the Raytheon Office of the General Counsel. This includes the Legal department s own array of SQL servers, web application servers and their document collection/review/production tool: iconectnxt. He also oversees the Company s discovery and legal hold operations. He is a member of the Raytheon s Records Management oversight committee and is trained as a Six Sigma Expert, for which he serves as both the Six Sigma and Knowledge Management Champion for the OGC. He is a member of the Sedona Conference working groups on ediscovery and Litigation Holds, and a frequent speaker at MCLE seminars and conferences on various ediscovery topics and their impact on corporate America. Prior to joining Raytheon in 1994, Woods was a Litigation Specialist with Wilmer Hale (DC office) and later became the Legal Administrator on a Bain Capital turn around team for Robertson-Ceco Corporation.

4 Introductions Deidre Paknad, CEO, PSS Systems Deidre leads PSS Systems and is the innovator behind the company s visionary Atlas legal holds and retention management software. She founded the CGOC in early 2004, is a member of the Sedona legal holds and legacy data teams, and is a recognized subject matter expert on legal holds and enterprise retention management. She is a seasoned software entrepreneur and executive. Deidre previously founded and was CEO of CoVia Technologies, where she was twice inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation.

5 Evolutionary Scale Legal Holds

6 What Experience Teaches Us More Holds Impact of More Holds Companies issue more holds to more people More reminders make it more difficult for employees Longer lists of custodians More custodians on hold across the enterprise Companies Need Employee self service is critical Expecting employees to mine their inbox is impractical and risky Custodian list management a key system requirement All-custodian reporting and visibility across matters

7 What Experience Teaches Us More Data on Hold Impact of More Holds on IT More holds affect more active data on more systems Must figure out how to manage preservation or collect it proactively Expensive, imperfect option Random s to IT staff doesn t work and 1 IT person can t cover the bases Blanket holds costly alternative Companies Need Continuous linkage between legal and IT Portal for IT to understand, meet and manage holds and collections efficiently System identities and concept in their legal holds system

8 What Experience Teaches Us More Collections Impact of More Collections Hit privacy walls and limitations/obligations from other jurisdictions Quickly amass legacy pool of data collected by litigation dept itself Legal becomes a data source Expensive to capture chain of custody of all collected Companies Need Ability to plan and execute appropriate plan by country Automated inventory of past collections and ability to check as a data source Automated logging of all collected data

9 What Experience Teaches Us More Matters Impact of More Bigger impact on the business Unanticipated cost Greater active burden on each business area More inquiries and expectations of transparency from business units Expectation of reliable budgeting and ability to control costs Companies Need Ability to forecast accurately based on current fact set Early warning when volumes indicate likely future budget miss Business unit based reporting on volume, load, timelines

10 What Experience Teaches Us Transitions Employee Transitions Risks Ostrich view of not necessary, not big deal dangerous Rate of employee transitions is shockingly high Ignorance is not bliss it s risk Impossible to manage manually Companies Need Map of business units, people and systems is key enabler Automatic monitoring Systems that can model a changing entity require real design, forethought and technology The entity, not litigation dept

11 Burden Goes Well Beyond Legal

12 Organizing the Team & Process How do you organize responsibilities for legal holds in the legal department? Is there a single coordinator or is each attorney and paralegal responsible for their own?

13 Changes in Practice and Procedure What's changed in your practices and procedures over the last 2-3 years? What do you expect to change in the coming 2 years?

14 Communicating with IT What education did the law department provide to IT? How do you manage the necessary dialogue and consistency with IT so nothing falls through the cracks?

15 Unexpected Issues What are some of the potholes companies face?

16 Reducing Cost and Burden What can the law department do to minimize the cost and burden of legal holds on the rest of the company?

17 For More Information Practitioners community and educational forum Inventor of legal holds and retention policy software Deidre Paknad,