Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/43390
When not actively engaged in a transactional project, those resources can also allow valuable insight into the written policies and procedures of the corporation with respect to RIM and litigation readiness, as well as the practical challenges associated with moving data within the firewall. This knowledge leads to operational efficiencies with each new case. Those same resources are then available to the corporation to help plan and strategize about the best collection and preservation options when a new legal hold is required. By regularly limiting the scope of data preserved to only that which is necessary, the legal department ends the vicious cycle of data compounding — the exponential growth of data held in storage that compounds over time — and avoids the creation of a new problem: legacy data remediation. Once the document request is issued and a production decision is made, the managed service personnel can liaise with their colleagues at the service provider to make data transfer and processing even more efficient. Incorporating this upstream management with downstream capabilities is often the most immediate and practical way for corporations to deal with the challenge of managing the information lifecycle. IMPROVED EFFICIENCIES The traditional discovery workflow, which involves pushing massive data sets into a processing box, extracting them and throwing expensive billable hours at an exhaustive, manual linear review, promulgates inefficiency and increases costs. Linking the behind- the-firewall processes to a routine (repeatable external processing and review workflow) makes further efficiencies and savings possible. 26 Corporate Law Departments ILTA White Paper Today's professional services firms provide corporations in litigation, and their law firms, with the tools and expertise to: • Gain early insight into cases • Reduce overall cost of litigation • Adequately and defensibly prepare for interrogatories and 30(b)6 depositions Facilitating the migration of the collected and preculled data from behind the firewall into applications that allow clients to prioritize documents according to relevancy before review is where professional services firms can deliver not only substantive decision-making assistance to the legal team but also meaningful cost savings. If companies can critically examine a data set to identify those documents most likely to be important or responsive at the beginning of the discovery process, then they don't have to waste valuable strategic planning time waiting for sometimes hundreds of attorneys to get through the full dataset. The legal team can truly get an early case assessment and turn the strategic discussion with the general counsel's office to one of substance rather than budget. If the case evidence is clear in that critical first 90 days, the attorneys (both in-house and retained counsel) can look at the substantive documents and decide whether further costly discovery is advisable or whether a settlement posture is a better course of action. This is a benefit that truly aligns retained counsel and the service provider to the business objective of a legal department.