Building Email Retention Policies

With computers and the Internet playing significant roles in today's business operations, communication through email is almost indispensable to any organizations. But mismanaged emails may become a huge liability for businesses especially when in need of reproducing relevant information in times of audits and litigations. That is why the urgent need to have effective email retention policies have emerged. Law.com discusses certain things to take note of when setting up email retention policies for businesses:

Of all the electronic discovery stories, those involving e-mail are the most captivating, prompting head-scratching and questions such as, "I can't believe they deleted those e-mails," and "Why didn't they keyword search for that message?" But those questions become less amusing if the stories involve a lawyer or his own clients. Protecting clients' interests means ensuring that they have a coherent e-mail retention policy in place.

E-mail has become indispensible in virtually all organizations, businesses and government. E-discovery exposes how people manage these records, and lawyers commonly discover their clients retain costly and useless e-mail while failing to identify or preserve essential messages, the absence of which can lead to sanctions. All the while the volume of e-mail grows. Based on its business-user survey, technology market research firm Radicati Group Inc. estimates that the average user in 2008 processed 140 e-mails per day, up from 75 e-mails per day for the average 2005 user.

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Extending Information Control With SharePoint

Sharepoint has been one of the leaders in providing records management applications. With its content management and business intelligence features, Sharepoint has become indispensable to many businesses. But with the complexity and demanding nature of records management most of them may not be maximizing this program's capabilites. To address this issue, Sharepoint white papers have become available online to help businesses extend full information control, reducing documented related risks and costs.


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Reduce Litigation Costs With Reliable Record Retention Policies

Having a sound record retention policy benefits any company largely due to the fact that there is an increasing amount of regulatory compliance that require saving particular types of documents. Also, carelessly deleting files and failure to adhere to company document destruction policies does not only constitute a possible violation in regulatory requirements but will also increase legal risks. Therefore, employing a reliable record retention management is a big factor in decreasing Litigation risks and cost.


So how much could bad corporate record retention cost a company? DuPont, from a case study, spent almost $12M reviewing documents in a Discovery, only to find that according to existing published policy, those documents should have been destroyed in the routine course of business. The company had waisted valuable amount of resources that could have been spent in further business expansion.


As easy as it may sound but practicing good records management is troubling for companies. It is due to the fact that today's businesses deal with electronic data in doing day to day operations. Unlike its predecessor the paper document, electronic information (emails, word documents, spreadsheet, etc.) is too complex that it has certain characteristics that makes it hard to manage and has caused a lot of headaches to IT departments. Electronic information can become too scattered and hard to control even with a central repository which increases a company's exposure to legal risks.


Debates have surfaced as to how should document management be implemented. Though many would agree that what businesses should focus on is applying what technology has to offer in corporate record retention and document destruction policies. Investments in electronic discovery software, as learned by other companies the hard way, could save a lot of money in legal costs and could save the company itself.

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