In-house lawyers are concerned that their businesses are
unable to respond to legal demands to retrieve electronic
documents, a survey of lawyers at 200 global companies
reveals.
The KPMG Forensic and Harris Interactive survey found that 38%
of lawyers surveyed said that it would be difficult to retrieve
data in their organisation, potentially exposing their firms to
high costs or reputational damage in the event of a legal
dispute.
"Companies have to deal with a mind-bogglingly large amount of
data being generated every day, which not only has to be stored but
made searchable and retrievable in the future," said Paul
Tombleson, head of forensic technology at KPMG Forensic in the
UK.
"Storing and searching large volumes of data, often across
borders and across different legacy IT systems, continues to be a
major challenge for many companies. Whilst this might seem like an
IT issue, when an investigation arises, it can become an urgent
reputational and financial one," he said.
Half of the lawyers surveyed said they were concerned about the
legal department's ability to find data, and nearly 40% admit it
would be difficult to retrieve relevant data in the event of a
regulatory investigation or major litigation.
Some 21% of legal departments had never been consulted by their
IT departments about changes in storage capabilities within the
organisation and 25% were "rarely or never" consulted about the
adoption of new technologies for dealing with electronic evidence
for e-discovery.
Many said that software to manage data and e-discovery was hard
to find.
The lawyers said they faced future challenges with electronic
information management due to the growth in data, data security,
increased computerisation and data access.
Nineteen per cent said they were unsure that IT could help, and
a further 10% did not see any improvements or opportunities for the
future.