Sound data management and security are essential for every business today. When legal disputes arise, a company's response to discovery must be coordinated and system-wide. Companies must establish, maintain, modify as needed, and document efficient and defensible data preservation and e-Discovery protocols and procedures.
Baker Donelson offers an extraordinary concentration of diverse and talented professionals who are knowledgeable about Electronically Stored Information (ESI). Several years ago, we established a standing e-Discovery task force committed exclusively to information management and e-Discovery issues. The members of the task force have experience across industries, business models, practice areas and court systems. They stay abreast of the most recent developments in ESI and educate Firm clients on issues and compliance, helping to create proactive, innovative and cost-effective solutions for our clients.
Effective e-Discovery management requires a coordinated effort between corporate counsel, human resources personnel, business line managers, IT and security resources, and trial counsel. We coordinate with all of these resources in a number of critical areas:
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Establishing sound data management and retention policies and procedures, including effective internal controls, security practices and legal hold and litigation response protocols
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Developing proactive and efficient mechanisms to monitor the uniform implementation and execution of data management and discovery policies and procedures to ensure that the core processes implemented to respond to litigation and e-Discovery are consistently administered in a sound and defensible manner if challenged
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Achieving centralized and systematic management and control of legal hold notices
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Determining where the use of outside support vendors is warranted and, if so, assisting in the selection and engagement of such vendors
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Providing go-to proficiency on ESI sources within the company for purposes of early discovery conferences, allowing the company effectively to pre-size production burdens, offer pre-tested search protocols, implement effective search terms and parameters, and facilitate rolling productions geared to identifying and producing records from the most important "core" sources early on
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Coordinating the efforts of in-house IT personnel, litigation and discovery response teams with outside vendors, expert consultants and trial counsel to help ensure a comprehensive and defensible response to e-Discovery that is tailored to the context of the particular proceeding or subpoena and executed in an efficient and cost-effective manner
- Providing experience in handling and resolving all facets of e-Discovery disputes in a proactive manner that takes into account the potential impact of isolated proceedings upon "big picture" concerns and issues critical to the company's long-term objectives.
Our in-house litigation support staff routinely communicates with our clients' IT professionals to identify relevant repositories of ESI, and can participate in meetings, motions and court hearings in order to speak constructively and authoritatively to e-Discovery issues.
We understand the problems of cost efficiency, inadvertent disclosure of privileged information and spoliation. We have represented publicly traded companies and large multi-state businesses regarding e-Discovery matters in local, regional and national litigation, as well as advised companies on data management and security issues, policies and procedures for record retention, and document hold and internal response protocols.
We have robust in-house training for all practice areas and regularly conduct practice meetings to discuss current trends and litigation strategies to better serve our clients. We keep abreast of current developments in e-Discovery in all circuit courts, and we participate in the Sedona Institute as well as other national organizations and initiatives dedicated to e-Discovery and information technology and management issues. In addition, we have been active at the state and local level on e-Discovery matters, including recent efforts in cooperation with the committee drafting the new e-Discovery rules for the State of Tennessee.
We are well equipped to internally handle large volumes of ESI and Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) data to maintain control over and to allow quick review and analysis of data for determinations of relevancy, responsiveness and privilege. We can convert more than 500 different file formats to load into our case management software to allow review, analysis and searching of email, email attachments, word processing files and spreadsheets. We can design and build databases to manage data gathered during the discovery process, including databases that are web-enabled, allowing attorneys, experts, co-counsel and clients to access the data over the web at any time convenient to them. Easy accessibility is one key to improving cost efficiency.
We manage the case lifecycle with such tools as Summation, Ringtail, CaseLogistix or CaseMap, creating databases and developing search techniques that allow our team to review, organize, locate and respond to large amounts of data in a quick and efficient manner. In addition, we have established relationships with leading national and local data management and litigation support vendors, forensic experts and other external resources for cost-efficient e-Discovery outsourcing when appropriate.