Litigation Support

Computer Weekly reported yesterday on the disheartening results of a KPMG Forensics and Harris Interactive Survey of 200 global companies in which half of the in-house counsel respondents expressed doubt about their legal department's ability to find data. Nearly 40% thought it would be challenging to retrieve data even for a major lawsuit or a regulatory action.

21% of the legal departments were not consulted by their IT departments about changes in data storage and, worse, 25% said were "rarely or never" consulted about the implementation of new technologies intended for electronic discovery. 19% were doubtful that their IT department could effectively help them meet e-discovery challenges and 10% didn't see the situation changing much in the future.

A notable quote from Paul Tombleson, head of forensic technology at KPMG Forensic in the UK: "Storing and searching large volumes of data, often across borders and across different legacy IT systems, continues to be a major challenge for many companies. While this might seem like an IT issue, when an investigation arises, it can become an urgent reputational and forensic one."

The survey's gloomy result is consistent with what we see all the time, and Tombleson's quote is reflective of the complexity of large volumes of ESI which have overwhelmed the capacity of many businesses to deal effectively with their data. By in large, we are still racing to catch up with the electronic world - and we are many laps behind the exponential growth of our data.

E-mail: snelson@senseient.com    Phone: 703-359-0700

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