A Guide to Discovery: Abandoned Email Archives

• Overview

Understanding email systems and email archives will help you decide when your organization should delete all of those old emails.If Shakespeare were alive today, he might write, let's kill all the emails. Unlike 20 years ago, it is undisputed that an email system is a widely used tool for day-to-day work; and a generator, and proliferator, of a huge, expensive vat of discoverable information downstream in electronic discovery. As in other electronically stored information (ESI) arenas, email management has continued to become more complex in an era of ever-increasing customers'/users' demands for instant responses and thus companies' expectations that exempt workers send and receive messages 24/7. Archives generated by individuals or inhering in enterprise wide archiving platforms deployed by an organization have many ramifications throughout the life cycle of data. So, it behooves most every organization to take proactive steps day-to-day to try to avoid risks and costs once in reactive mode downstream in e-discovery. This topic will provide many practical tips for companies of all shapes and sizes and for their counsel.

Authors

Agenda

Day-To-Day Proactive Email Management - Destroy or Drown

• Records Retention/Destruction Basics

• Proactive Polices and Processes Help Reactive E-discovery Downstream

• Archives - Multiple Meanings and Respective Key Concerns

• Email Systems - an Overview

Specific Proactive Measures

• Achieving Buy-in and Consensus as to Regime Change

• Enterprise Wide Archives - Pros and Cons

• Forbid Pst's and Other Individually Generated Archives?

• Age-Based and Size-Cap Rules?

• Litigation Hold Process Development

Reactive E-discovery Downstream

• Preservation/Spoliation, Including Attorney Ethics

• Costs/Efficiencies

• Avoiding Risk of Having to Restore Backup Data

Beyond Email - Other Platforms Filled With Messages, etc.

• Communications Platforms - Im and Video-Calling Apps; and Collaboration Software

• Cloud - Salesforce, G Suite (Google Apps), Onedrive, Amazon Web Services, etc.