A common misconception is that e-discovery begins when a suit is filed and a litigation hold is received. This could not be further from the truth. Data preservation and retention procedures are something that your clients need to have in place long before a suit even happens. The huge burden that e-discovery is known to place on a client is often due to the lack of instituting proper policies and procedures around data retention. Admitting that we live in a litigious society may be an understatement. Since we are aware of that from the onset, there are ways in which we can best equip our clients to protect themselves in the event that a suit arises.

One of the most frustrating things for counsel is the lack of information provided by a client. Knowing that a piece of information had existed and your client is no longer in possession of it to help prove his/her position is everything short of satisfying. I have witnessed many attorneys scour the earth to try to retrieve a small piece of information that they knew was pivotal to changing the outcome of their case. Aside from putting out the fires that your clients create, you, as an attorney, also have a duty to help provide your client with proactive and preventative solutions.

Every organization should have a basic electronic data retention policy in place. This is applicable to any and all electronic media. Everything ranging from Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, emails, text messages, and even internal instant messages. Some organizations are bound by regulatory and compliance bodies that force their hand into this, but many are not. Through my work as a consultant, I see that a lot of people haven't given any thought to data retention policies, nor do they have any idea where to even start.