EFFECTIVE COORDINATION OF RISK MANAGEMENT AND E-DISCOVERY
RC: Could you explain, in broad terms, the growing correlation between risk management and e-discovery in today’s business world?
Beckett: There has always been a correlation between risk management and the requirement to review documents as they often provide the best source of intelligence and evidence around managing and mitigating risk. The explosion of data in the past few years means e-discovery techniques are coming to the forefront in risk management. Given the ever growing volumes and variety of data, especially that data which exists on the social and most informal channels, such as chat and IM messages, the need to not only grasp data, but positively take advantage of it from a risk management perspective, is critical. Gaining an insight into what is being ‘said’ across the different forms of communication in a timely and intelligent manner can mean that risks are controlled and mitigated before they have the chance to really damage an organisation.
Benz: With the new regulations around data protection, the need to review data and the associated risk of committing a breach of data privacy law must be balanced. There is, therefore, a strong organisational aspect to it in that robust rules and procedures around managing risks must be established. In particular, e-discovery poses challenges since its scope can extend to numerous legal entities across a variety of jurisdictions. Given the time pressures that usually come with e-discovery during the course of internal investigations, a ‘let’s cross the bridge when we come to it’ approach is inadequate to say the least. This is even more pertinent, since the new EU regulations require privacy by design and data compliance by default.
Jul-Sep 2017 Issue
Alvarez & Marsal LLP
Linklaters LLP
Gleiss Lutz