As you prepare your Litigation Response Plan, it is a great time to review your company policies. Your document retention policy should be reviewed first. Make sure it is up to date and it includes electronic data, not just paper.

Employees must review and sign off on the policy, and every employee should be trained regarding what the retention policy is and how it's used, and training may need to be updated annually.

Make sure the document retention policy is enforced. This is where most companies miss it. You should verify that the policy is enforced using an annual audit. Why is this important?  In an e-discovery case, the other side may scream about your destruction of data. You need to tell the judge, "Your honor, we did destroy the data as part of an objective, ongoing document retention policy that we enforce objectively, and we audit enforcement of that policy yearly. Here is the compliance report. "  If you do that, you will be in great shape. Also, when you do your Litigation Response Plan, review other company policies such as the data destruction policy, computer acceptable use policy, email policy, and others.

Legal Technology Group

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