Managed Discovery

Intelligent Discovery Solutions works with corporations to overlay best practices and regulatory obligations (such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure - FRCP) with internal infrastructure and business requirements to develop a sustainable knowledge base and customized, strategic response plan. This thoughtful plan manages both risk and transactional costs related to litigation, transforming individual case needs into long term cost containment and risk mitigation strategies by identifying and modifying root causes of information mismanagement.

Reducing Risk and Cost is Essential.  The 2006 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) placed an increased focus on corporate litigation obligations, including a better understanding of corporate information systems, tighter prevention around the destruction of relevant electronic documents, and more collaboration when producing relevant information.  As such, corporations need to keep a clear focus on their discovery process from preservation to production.  Consequences of having ineffective or incomplete discovery can include monetary fines, exclusion of evidence/testimony, adverse inference, and mounting costs associated with expanded discovery.

Strategy is Critical. The fundamentals of a comprehensive litigation response plan begin with a core set of activities important to your legal team, information management department, and individual business units. At a high level, these activities consist of the following components:

• Document and track any active litigation preservation and regulatory retention obligations. It is imperative to consider existing requirements into any plan.
• Develop profiles for internal systems that are repeatedly relevant to litigation.  These profiles identify and summarize the information necessary for efficient Rule 16 meetings and Rule 26 disclosures. Some examples of information collected might include data volumes, sizes and locations, prior system history, data inputs and outputs, available archives, backup systems, and retention and purge settings.
• Establish an e-Discovery Legal IT Team consisting of information managers, legal representatives, and business unit managers that are responsible for the program's governance
• Create and maintain detailed system 30(b)(6) Q&A documents
• Recommend and implement data management strategies for online and offline data repositories / storage locations
• Identify, create or augment existing long term information management roadmaps

Experience is the Advantage. iDS has proven experience implementing these litigation response plan components for a variety of different clients--from large multinational corporations to small, single location companies.  Our experts have worked with clients in developing and prioritizing a strategy based on individual business needs, litigation landscape and existing infrastructure.