Disruptive Knowledge | Jordan Lawrence » Email Management

The First Step in Reducing the Cost of eDiscovery

Jordan Lawrence — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:19:42 +0000

How many emails do you receive and send in a day? Now, imagine over a course of a year, or three years, or even five years the number of emails one person in your organization produces or receives.

According to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and state rules, parties are required to produce their electronically stored information during litigation. To avoid the outlandish costs and burden of producing the enormous amounts of electronically stored information companies should take a pre emptive approach to reducing the cost of eDiscovery.

The first step is to reduce the amount of records and emails you have stored. The best way is to develop and implement document retention policies including an email retention policy. With Jordan Lawrence’s Information Governance you can assess your records and information management in 30 days and develop actionable retention schedules using our best practice standards.

Data Breach Leads to $20 Million Class Action

Jordan Lawrence — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:21:07 +0000

Data breaches can be costly and devastating. This is the case with Countrywide Financial who compromised thousands of customers’ personal information. As a result, a class action suit seeks more than $20 million for invasion of privacy and punitive damages.

Often, the term data breach makes us think of someone from outside the company gaining access to corporate networks. However, most data breaches are the result of faulty processes or improperly enforced policies within an organization.

Jordan Lawrence understands that eliminating the risk of a breach starts with identifying where sensitive information lives within the organization and understanding the processes and policies in place to manage that information.

With this knowledge, companies are better positioned to implement and properly enforce policies and procedures that protect personal identifiable information and reduce their financial and legal risks.

How Much Email Growth Until Everyone Says, “Enough!”

Jordan Lawrence — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:11:34 +0000

A gigabyte of email storage equals about 100,000 messages. A terabyte is a thousand times that (one hundred million messages).

At an annual growth rate of 18%, you’ll double every four years. The cost for review documents (according to hundreds of recent Assessment for Records Risks^TM clients) is at least $3.00 per page.

This means that every unnecessary gigabyte of email (and every company has a lot of unnecessary gigabytes being retained) equals at least $300,000 in review costs. A terabyte is a thousand times worse.

No wonder so many companies settle unmerited cases to avoid discovery and review costs in the first place. (Wonder if plaintiffs’ attorneys have noticed this?)

Maybe it’s time to start driving the volume and costs down, instead of assuming that they have to keep going up. Because they don’t. And they shouldn’t. Most companies passed by “enough” years ago.