In-house legal teams struggle with online data management

In-house legal teams struggle with online data management

Data management and retrieval when needed amid online platform boom continues to be a challenge for legal departments

In-house legal teams are reportedly struggling to keep pace with technology in preserving and retrieving data for legal reasons, a study has revealed.

A report prepared by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and data archiving company Pagefreezer, has said that they are still following immature or intermediate process for retaining online data.

The 'Collecting Online Data for eDiscovery & Litigation Readiness Report' suggests that a high ratio of 71.6 per cent of in-house legal teams use obsolete processes for retaining data and struggle when needed for eDiscovery and litigation purposes.

Most organisations admitted that their data management system was siloed across different business units, with almost a quarter having no clear retention strategies in place.

Only a miniscule 3.3 per cent said that they have the tools to automate the data retention process.

"Combining the impacts of the exigencies of Covid-19 and the already frantic pace of adoption of new technology, information governance is undergoing a revolution. With the explosive volume of ESI (electronically stored information) being created through team collaboration tools like Slack and MS Teams, websites, social media, and text messages, legal teams need to preserve and produce this ESI in the same manner as they currently handle email," Catherine Moynihan, AVP of legal management services at ACC, said adding that many legal teams would not only struggle to respond to a sudden request for the production of online data, but also they would struggle to even identify and access it.

Those who might find it difficult or impossible to retrieve text messages stood at a staggering 40 per cent, while 28 per cent of the respondents said they would struggle to produce social media records if a legal matter arose.

Most legal teams rely on their IT departments to help them retrieve data. The study said that very few legal departments would be able to produce records themselves quickly or easily.

The data retention policies also varied depending on the size of the company. Around 25 per cent of medium to large-sized businesses said they had an advanced information governance maturity level compared to just one in 10 for small companies.

The silver lining being that while more than 50 per cent of the respondents said that they have either made or have a plan to make investments to improve information governance standards, while about 20 per cent saying that they have no immediate plans to investment in this head.