Local papers ran an eye-catching story recently about a “smiling and smartly dressed middle-class couple” that nearly died trapped beneath a mountain of stuff that had accumulated in their home over the course of many years.
We marvel at stories like these and wonder how anyone could make this big of a mess. And yet, “a surprising number of us who work with business organizations or professional service firms — in offices that are otherwise orderly — let e-mails just pile up in our inbox, sent folder and trash bin,” says John F. Shonkwiler, a partner with Novack and Macey LLP. “Don’t do this. It is not a smart business practice and, if your company becomes involved in litigation, it can cost an awful lot of money to sort through the mess. Every person in your office should be encouraged to organize their e-mails, just as they organize paper documents.”
Smart Business spoke with Shonkwiler about how keeping e-mails neatly organized and cataloged can save you money and time, especially should you ever be involved in litigation.
What happens with e-mails that are subject to discovery in litigation?
Over the past decade, as litigators have tried to get their arms around electronic communication and how to handle it in terms of discovery applications, the ‘dump and search’ method has become common. In litigation, dump and search refers to the way information is obtained from the litigants, when massive amounts of data and information are dumped off of a server without any discretion. It is then transferred to where it can be electronically scanned and searched using search terms related to the litigation. Once that data is gleaned, a manual search is done for relevance and privilege.
Needless to say, the time and expense required to perform the dump and search process is typically proportionate to the size of the e-mail data dump — in many cases, massive — not the least of which is lawyers’ fees for reviewing the (often still massive) quantity of e-mail identified by the term search process. Then, even after that process is completed, the e-mails usually have to be processed and converted by a vendor so that they’re compatible with litigation software.
This is a long and complicated process for just one person’s e-mail. When you have to gather and produce several employees’ e-mail, it can easily take several months to perform the dump and search process. Perhaps the scariest part is that the quantity of e-mail generated in the workplace is only growing as we continue to develop into a community of BlackBerry and smart phone addicts. Because the process is expensive and burdensome, courts must be receptive to alternatives.
