As painfully illustrated in recent white collar and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cases — and by an increasing number of large- and small-scale civil litigation matters — a company’s failure to understand its legal obligations regarding the retention and destruction of documents can lead to disaster. Moreover, failure to adopt and enforce strict policies for retention and destruction of documents can result in staggering litigation costs.
Electronic discovery has become standard in litigation, and practitioners well-versed in the world of data, metadata, and forensic searching are becoming increasingly intrusive in their demands for electronic material. Yet many companies still do not appreciate that the significant increase in electronic information, coupled with the informality with which it is created and proliferated, creates enormous litigation risks.
This Foley Executive Briefing Series program examined the key components of an effective data retention and destruction policy, including:
- Which documents should be destroyed?
- When should the documents be destroyed?
- What issues should a records retention policy address?
- What are the current e-discovery and e-mail retention best practices?
- How should you accommodate various statutory and regulatory requirements?
- Who should be in charge of policy implementation, administration, and enforcement?
- What immediate steps can you take to cut e-discovery costs?
- When should documents be withheld from otherwise-scheduled destruction?
- What audit procedures should be used to determine that the policy is being executed in a consistent manner, and why is this important?
The program also addressed common pitfalls and costs associated with failure to adopt and enforce effective retention and destruction policies as well as the availability of document management systems designed to help to implement your retention and destruction policy.
For questions about registering, please contact Wendy Decker at [email protected] or 617.342.4000.
For more information regarding this program, please contact Michael J. Tuteur.
Corporate Records: What to Keep and What to Toss is part of the Foley Executive Briefing Series. Learn more about upcoming programs in the series at Foley.com/FEBS.
