When faced with legal or regulatory action, government agencies and other organizations may find themselves fielding information requests in preparation for an audit or litigation. This process is called discovery. It’s when the parties involved in a legal or regulatory matter try to find and review relevant documents that may serve as evidence in the case. Increasingly, because so many modern records are created, stored, and processed in electronic format, discovery focuses on electronic documents, hence the term “e-discovery.”
In general, e-discovery functions just like traditional discovery. Records must be found, assessed for relevance, preserved against destruction, and turned over to the appropriate groups. Electronic Records Management (ERM) systems can ease the process of e-discovery tremendously at every step, if the ERM platform includes the right capabilities.
1: Finding relevant records
The first step in any e-discovery process is finding the records that may be relevant to the lawsuit or regulatory action. This may be easier said than done, because the initial sweep may require searches related to a wide array of potential qualifiers. The organization might need to find documents created between a certain date range, involving certain personnel, mentioning specific subjects, etc. In general, electronic records management (ERM) systems that support advanced search functionality, full-text search, searchable metadata, and search filters will make this step much easier. Some ERMs even allow users to save custom searches for repeated use.
2: Preserving records
Once potentially relevant records have been identified, they need to be preserved against alteration or destruction. Frequently, these records will be transferred into a system that exists specifically for housing records related to the e-discovery. In this case, the ERM should make records easy to export or otherwise transmit to a secondary system. Sometimes records will remain in the original system pending review, however. In this case, it may be necessary to reset access permissions for these files to prevent any users from making changes or deleting them.
3: Assessing the records
Once all of the potentially relevant records have been gathered into a collection, they must be reviewed to determine if they are genuinely relevant to the legal case or regulatory action. Irrelevant and duplicate records need to be found and removed, and other records may need to be converted into a new format (like PDF) for easier review. The ERM system should again enable smart, advanced search queries. Ideally, it will also offer file format conversion and export options.
4: Producing the records
If the records have not already been moved into an e-discovery system in a previous step, the records will need to be submitted to the court, attorneys, regulatory agency, and/or any other applicable authority. An ERM system that offers a way to package and transmit the records to the appropriate parties will ease this step.
About PSL
PSL is a global outsource provider whose mission is to provide solutions that facilitate the movement of business-critical information between and among government agencies, business enterprises, and their partners. For more information, please visit https://www.penielsolutions.com or email info@penielsolutions.com.