Educating Legal and IT on eDiscovery and policy challenges

Synopsis Part 2: Educating Legal and IT on eDiscovery and policy challenges
Synopsis Part 1: Intelligent collection for eDiscovery processing at $4/gigabyte

Electronic data discovery Interview - Steve d'Alencon is the VP of Product Marketing at Kazeon, Inc.  (Part 1 of 2) (Part 2 of 2)

Steve is responsible for leading go-to-market programs for Kazeon, including solution definition, demand generation, public and analyst relations and marketing communications. He is a product management and marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience at top enterprise software and high technology companies, including running his own marketing consultancy in Silicon Valley.

Prior to Kazeon, Steve was vice president of product management and marketing at GoRemote Internet Communications, a NASDAQ public company that was acquired by iPass, and vice president of marketing for the Oracle Application Server Division where he launched the Oracle Application Server and attained a top 3 market position while helping to double division revenue. Mr. d'Alencon studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Drexel University and completed the Stanford Advanced Management College.

By Joshua Konkle writing for DCIGInc.com
www.dciginc.com

Joshua Konkle: In your work with corporate legal counsel how do you help them synchronize their policies and their IT, what is the mood of legal counsel out there?

Steve D'Alencon:  Most of the eDiscovery work today is done tactically to address a pressing, reactive matter (subpoena, internal investigation, compliance request).  Some forward-thinkers are beginning to look holistically at the eDiscovery process with a proactive, "legal risk management" mindset, which requires a different policy approach.

When considering policies, it is important to have a specific, quantifiable and measurable team goal for policy creation.  We have seen the most success in synchronizing corporate legal and general counsel (GC) teams with IT teams when a "Legal Liaison" or IT eDiscovery Support Team roles are created.  These individuals can be IT employees with a legal degree or a technically minded paralegal who have a good understanding of the legal work flow and process.

Further complicating matters, the FRCP amendments intended to clarify the eDiscovery process.  However, this has left people scratching their heads.  The reason may lie in the fact that the amendments don't specifically state how one should go about fulfilling them.

The process of identification, collection, initial processing, review and analysis has historically been done by outside service providers.  Arguably, due to costs and efficiencies, the efficiencies of using service providers have been unrealized in firms with regular litigation and complex IT infrastructure.  At Kazeon we see policy being driven by reducing costs for collection and review.  The eDiscovery processes are clearly becoming an in-house mandate, in so doing adds additional confusion for retention and disposition policy making.

Joshua Konkle: How do you educate the IT people on important legal concepts?

Steve D'Alencon: There is no silver bullet to educating IT people on important legal concepts. One option is having a 3rd party legal expert or an IT-oriented eDiscovery expert conduct a class or tutorial. Typically, this would include a discussion on basic legal concepts, the FRCP amendments, the time line and work flow implied by the amendments, best practice examples of policies/rules used in industry and some case law citing successful defenses and notable losses as it relates to technology processes.

Joshua Konkle: How do you educate legal counsel on IT?

Steve D'Alencon: Educating legal counsel on IT or technical products/concepts is not as hard as it may sound.  IT and legal are not familiar with their respective jobs, process and daily activities.  Therefore, the approach is similar in conducting some sort of class or tutorial on important IT concepts and the various best practices.  This would include a discussion on ESI, content and metadata, storage technologies, how technology can accomplish different types of legal holds, what different types of technology are useful for reactive vs. proactive eDiscovery activities, etc.

If you would like to communicate with him directly, he can be reached at www.kazeon.com or by calling Kazeon toll free at 1 800 KAZEON1 (1 800 583 9661).

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