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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