Why does almost every corporation have a disaster recovery plan but few have a Litigation Response Plan?  Well, litigation is a disaster! Be proactive in responding to litigation with a Litigation Response Plan, the return on investment is huge.

The problem is that litigation costs are out of control. There is more data in the corporation everyday, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have shorter deadlines where we have to produce more data. This leads to 24 by 7 crisis management dealing with the people and the workflow of litigation. Errors occur as companies rush to rationalize data and find key evidence.

So companies and their lawyers have been sanctioned, assessed attorney's fees and costs, and this creates great risk.

• See Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC
• $8. 5 Million - Qualcomm II: Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp.
• $2. 75 Million - United States v. Philip Morris USA Inc.
• $1 Million - In re Prudential Insurance Co. of America 

The solution is a Litigation Response Plan, which is also known as a Litigation Preparedness Plan or Litigation Readiness Plan. With a Litigation Response Plan in place, the following will be identified at your company: the Electronic Discovery Team, the litigation history, the computer systems and what we call the data universe, the people and the workflow involved in the day‑to-day aspects of litigation, and the e-discovery strategies that you want to use in your cases.

A Litigation Response Plan lowers the cost of outside vendors and outside counsel, lowers the cost of internal resources, and leads to efficient, low-stress, electronic discovery. You lessen the data population to review and shorten the time to get the critical files and email to settle cases, and reduce costs and get those files closed. It also substantially reduces many risks such as improper preservation or spoliation, searching live systems or indefensible collection practices, or a chain of custody problems, inadvertently disclosing confidential corporate data, discovery of relevant data too late, or reprocessing data, which leads to much more costs and delays.

Legal Technology Group

Phone: (503) 200-2936