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Attorneys Struggle to Prepare for Legal Discovery

The prominence of eDiscovery in the last few weeks certainly highlights the growing need for all kinds of companies to prepare efficiently and sufficiently for legal discovery.

We first reported that legal costs were rising, because organizations were ill-prepared to manage the massive amounts of content being searched and analyzed.

Now, as it turns out, law firms are also pointing fingers at their unorganized clients -- saying that not only are they unprepared, they don't have any system is place to manage records or track documents.

In their recent study, The Discovery-Ready Enterprise II: Challenges and Opportunities on the Road to Litigation Preparedness, Océ Business Services, a document process management and eDiscovery services company, reports about the key challenges corporate and law firm attorneys are facing in an effort to meet the growing demands of legal discovery.

The results of an online survey of 128 legal professionals highly experienced in legal discovery and records management revealed that:

• 7% of in-house attorneys indicated that their company is well prepared to comply with legal discovery requests involving paper and electronic documents.

• 42% of in-house attorneys surveyed said that their company has not implemented internal eDiscovery processes or technology.

• Almost half of corporate counsel respondents said their company does not have a fully implemented records program.

Yet, there is positive news. Most surveyed agreed that being prepared is important, and that there are steps being made to implement more effective strategies:

• 49% of respondents are in the process of conducting a readiness analysis

• 29% of respondents are in the process of hiring employees with eDiscovery experience or hiring a consultant to help implement eDiscovery processes and technology.

• 63% of corporate attorneys indicated their companies plan to establish internal processes or technology in the next 6 to 12 months.

• 75% of attorneys said that their organization plans to implement a records program within the next year.

Though there seems to be a gap between what companies know they should be doing and what they are currently doing, once a company has gone through search and discovery, it is more likely to take the whole process more seriously.

However, that's little consolation at the time. As we have explored earlier, and as we will continue to explore, there are many different types of companies and products available to help you meet your eDiscovery needs. So don't be shy. Go ahead and get organized.

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