The “A Tale of Two eDiscovery Operating Models” panel held Wednesday during the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) 2019 Institute in Las Vegas examined the ways in which corporate legal departments can leverage e-discovery and information governance processes to add value to their organizations.

Finding ways to defray costs is of special importance to legal departments since most typically don't generate revenue for a company.

“The main thing is showing your value. We need to be better about focusing on our accomplishments and raising them up,” said Wendy Riggs, lead of information governance and legal operations at Airbnb.

Riggs was joined on the panel by Melissa DeHonney, who serves as corporate counsel at the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. Both stressed the importance of collecting data or metrics that demonstrate costs saved and establishing a baseline by which to mark improvement.

It's a good way to catch the attention of higher-ups within the company who are splitting their attention among multiple departments and other pressing needs.

“They're focused on things with much greater risk exposures than getting e-discovery processes right, but that's such a critical component,” DeHonney said.

But what exactly are some of the things that corporate e-discovery or information governance professionals can do to yield results worth sharing in the first place? When Riggs and DeHonney first arrived at their respective companies, outside counsel were still driving the majority of the e-discovery process.

In Riggs' case, that meant that data belonging to her company was sitting out with a variety of different vendors. One of the first things she focused on when arriving at Airbnb was create a living data map to help keep track of where all of the company's information was located.

Sometimes that includes telling co-workers where not to keep data. “We've spent a lot of time helping people understand that email is not an information repository,” Riggs said.

Along similar lines, DeHonney advised the audience to consider using a single vendor model to drive standardization and efficiency. Both she and Riggs have also now established parameters that outside counsel need to follow in terms of how they handle e-discovery.

All of this is done with the purpose of driving improvements and positive results, which can in turn potentially feed investments in new hires and technology within the department.

“It's getting that attention of leadership and saying we're doing something important here and getting even more vocal,” DeHonney said.