The Absurdity of E-Discovery Without a Solution

Eugen Tarnow  March 24 2011 04:35:55 PM

I recall reading a New York Times article earlier this year discussing the poor job prospects for new law-school graduates. One highly indebted individual was able to find limited prosperity performing legal discovery. His days consist of a drudge where he sits in a “small, windowless room with five other lawyers, all clicking through page after page of documents on computers under fluorescent lights.” Picture, however, how many of these poor saps it would take to manually go through your company’s mail file in the case of litigation. Consider any employee whose correspondence could one day be requested, and estimate, even conservatively, this employee’s messaging backlog.

Though providing jobs to these young doctors of jurisprudence might be a noble act of charity, it is not cost-effective for a company to have its e-discovery performed manually. Human beings can only be so effective when using just the brain; there is a limit to their speed and efficiency. After all, man did not evolve with the adaptation of being able to easily review gigabytes of electronic data.

The fact is that any company that can rightfully fear litigation and has a sizable large mail file should be prepared with a software solution that can help search its mail file. The tools such a solution provides will be invaluable to the legal team. If a company uses Lotus Notes, it can without a doubt benefit from acquiring Reducemail Pro E-Discovery, Reducemail Pro Journal, and Reducemail Pro Audit from the Reducemail Pro suite of mail management products.

The newest module of Reducemail Pro, Reducemail Pro E-Discovery not only helps lawyers search the mail file for information, greatly reducing the effort involved in e-discovery, but it includes additional features such as the ability put certain users’ accounts on legal hold, preventing deletions. Also importantly, Reducemail Pro E-Discovery is designed so that lawyers can use it independently, with little to no IT hand-holding. These highly educated professionals deserve respect after all, even though we love to joke about them.

Reducemail Pro Audit is another powerful mail file search tool that would be a fantastic supplement to Reducemail Pro E-Discovery, and Reducemail Pro Journal enhances native Lotus Notes journaling, making it even easier to retain documents for individual on legal holds. This combination of products from the Reducemail Pro suite is a comprehensive and powerful arsenal for any Lotus Notes house expecting litigation, something that will unfortunately persist well into the future.

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