A bevy of published articles bemoan the escalating costs of discovery — the process during litigation in which the parties are required to exchange information. Given the informational nature of discovery, the CIO should help effectively manage information and control the associated costs.
The discovery process can be obscenely expensive if you and your data are not ready for it. Your company can spend handsomely on legal and vendor costs to muck through the preservation, search, review and production of vast swaths of electronically stored information (and occasionally spending a fortune litigating the issue of whether your company correctly preserved, searched, reviewed, and produced information). Reported cases and legal periodicals are full of horror stories of discovery costs run amok—such as more than $6 million spent to comply with a third-party subpoena in the In re Fannie Mae Securities Litigation case.
So, how do you help your company avoid hemorrhaging money on discovery costs?