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IG's Value Add

• Business needs: Driving business requires ready access to customer, product and market information that drive shareholder value, while containing costs. IG technology and processes enable business value by providing mobile and localized access to the specific information needed for various activities. It also provides programs that streamline workflows and eliminate spending on unnecessary IT or legal services.

• Legal needs: Counsel must satisfy duties to preserve, produce and protect information and minimize the costs of meeting legal obligations for information. With IG in place to mitigate risks, in-house legal teams can manage and coordinate the legal hold and collection process more efficiently, ensure privacy duties are met and lower e-discovery costs.

• Records management needs: IG helps records managers define and meet regulatory and policy requirements to keep records, rapidly respond to regulator inquiries, syndicate and enforce retention schedules for all information globally and across all employees.

• IT needs: Like legal, IT is under pressure to minimize “run the shop” costs to increase in “grow the investment” activities, even while the total volume of data is consistently rising. IG enables this by disposing of data debris consistently, defensibly and automatically, and archiving structured and unstructured data as it ages.

The Role of Contracts

• Pre-close diligence for merger, acquisition or divestiture.
• Post-close diligence for business integration and synergies.
• Risk assessment (to appreciate liabilities and exposure).
• Gap analysis (versus standard provisions).
• Audit business practices.
• Compliance/ regulatory response.
• Data investigations.

Stephen Allen is global head of legal services delivery at Hogan Lovells, and is based in London. He is a highly experienced operational and transformational business leader and is charged with delivering quality, efficiency and innovation to legal project management, legal service centers, flexible resourcing, service insight and machine learning. Deana Uhl is a senior director in the FTI Technology practice and is based in Houston. Uhl provides consulting to corporate clients, with a focus on designing, implementing and enabling change management for information governance, data privacy, data security and e-discovery programs.