Why Legal Teams Struggle with Accessing Data for Discovery and Investigations

Legal teams often struggle with gaining access to data for discovery and investigations for many reasons. However, the main reason is that often times legal does not know where data resides or how to find it, which is certain to make an expensive discovery matter even costlier when it comes to accessing and producing data.  

In these instances, the burden is often passed on to IT staff, who are then tasked with helping legal teams identify where the data resides, or assisting in the selection, deployment and implementation of an archiving tool. While maintaining data in an archive can reduce costs as well as help legal teams apply retention and deletion policies effectively, this may prove futile if there are no legal hold or retention management policies in place.  

 Therefore, it is important for organizations to have a documented team approach that defines the responsibilities and accountabilities of IT, compliance and legal staff in the production of data for regulatory matters or investigations. Creating and adhering to solid policies that facilitate data retention and deletion as well as legal holds is not only beneficial to legal teams from a cost perspective, but critical for smart data management.