ANN ARBOR – The new rules of Federal Civil Procedure (FRCP) become effective December 1. Is your company ready? Are you aware how your company has been storing your electronic information? Are your network architecture maps current?
Unfortunately, litigation is part of corporate life (and the annual budget). The new FRCP rules are cause for revisiting your data and records management policies and procedures, particularly, as to how your electronic records are stored and maintained.
The new rules address the need to present the electronic discovery plan early in the case. In order to position yourself for intelligent participation in a scheduling meeting, you have to have the facts about your network(s), applications and data storage procedures. It is critical for you, or your outside counsel, to demonstrate a good-faith and well documented effort toward compliance with the new rules.
If you have a records management policy in place, it may need to be modified, and other groups in your organization may need to be aware of their role in supporting both the record and data management procedures and the discovery process for litigation and/or investigations.
Getting your house in order is more important now than ever before. Butzel Long has an Electronic Discovery and Records Management Practice Group that can create protocols and procedures that will serve to reduce the costs of these productions and management systems.
If you currently have multiple outside counsel creating multiple ?systems? for your recurring litigation and discovery obligations, let us help create a uniform and methodical approach for all your data production needs.
This column was written by Carol Romej, who co-chairs Butzel Long?s Electronic Records and Discovery Practice Group and its Technology and E-Commerce Practice Group. For more information, click on Butzel.Com
