Did you know that an enterprise is as much at risk from insiders as from external threats? How so, you may wonder? It is actually quite straightforward - internal threats can include fraud of many kinds, including accounting fraud and manipulation of data. Internal investigations must then uncover the truth in any kind of insider threat or fraud situation. To be truly effective, internal investigations must involve planning and also some amount of sensitivity to ensure that innocent employees are not affected or their reputations wrongfully tarnished. When carried out erroneously, investigations can also inadvertently contaminate evidence. Therefore, care and caution must be sensibly exercised during an internal investigation.
How to Start an Internal Investigation
Select your team of investigators with care, or your investigation could lose its grip before it even starts. Ensure that you have adequate and the necessary tools to collect, identify and cull information for evidence or proof. Having tools that can ease the job of the investigators provides a great advantage.
e Discovery Tools Can Help Internal Investigations
Internal investigations often require tools to help identify, collect, preserve and examine digital information. e-Discovery tools were previously considered useful only in providing assistance for litigation, but that is not the only place they can be helpful. electronic evidence discovery can also be utilized in internal investigations to manage records and handle regulatory compliance issues. e-Discovery tools can ensure:
· Swifter identification and collection of relevant electronically stored information
· Automatic analysis of data
· Accurate evidence collection (owing to e-discovery tools’ inherent intuitive abilities)
· Streamlined internal investigations
With e-discovery tools assisting investigators in combing out relevant data for a particular case, monitoring and reporting of data becomes relatively easy. By assisting with the culling of information, redaction and production, these tools provide end-to-end support in ensuring your internal investigations are made easy and hassle-free. Additionally they also provide support to streamline workflows and help resolve regulatory issues. The right kind of electronic discovery tool can ensure that the costs of culling and reviewing relevant Electronically Stored Information (ESI) are radically reduced.
Internal investigations need not be a pain in the neck for any enterprise. With e-discovery tools, investigations can truly be made easy.
It has certainly been a while since eDiscovery has become an indispensable part of litigation. There are noticeable trends that eDiscovery litigation has brought with its growth. Here are a few of them:
· Owing to advanced eDiscovery capabilties, litigators can now enter into cost benefit analysis early on in the eDiscovery process.
· Electronic documents, including images, placed online on a secured database grant everyone associated with the case access to these files. This reduces the number of copies made of these files/documents, thus ensuring money is saved on every copy.
· With eDiscovery litigation support, determination of documents relevant to the case has become quicker, ensuring that billable hours are considerably reduced.
· Even as the case progresses, eDiscovery helps ensure that all evidence is in a secure and convenient online file. The costs incurred while doing so are generally passed on to the client.
· With the brisk growth rate of electronically stored information, companies wrestle with risks to information from fresh sources like cloud computing, virtualization, etc. It is possible that to test this litigators will need to see if eDiscovery litigation support software can be effective and can ensure that data is efficiently searchable in the cloud.
· With the increase in the use of eDiscovery for litigation, there will be IT evaluations that will review the effect of new technologies on eDiscovery processes.
· Because of the increased usage of eDiscovery IT/Legal, the role of liaison has been considered separate,with budgets allocated for it specifically.
· The ability to mix well with technology yet also be a cost-effective solution will be something most law firms will continue to seek in an eDiscovery tool. This is perhaps an ongoing trend.
· eDiscovery platforms should ensure quality each time. Be it for processing needs or documentation requirements, the onus is on the platform to be defensible.
· Another important aspect that perhaps will be stressed even more is the ability of the tool to preserve data in such a manner that it eventually reduces the amount of documents needing to be reviewed.
· Litigation support professionals would eventually train themselves in IT tools and techniques to maximize their support to their clients.
These are just a few trends that we will continue to see in the field of eDiscovery and its growth .So here’s to greater discovery in the e-discovery process!
email discovery, electronic evidence discovery
Social networking sites are becoming tremendously popular and contain a wealth of information with active messages, tweets, blogs and comments. The repository of these social activities can provide valuable and potent information which can be produced as electronic evidence in court for litigation.
eDiscovery depends largely on electronically stored information which is considered valid legal evidence. Lawyers search for valid information on networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, My Space, etc., all of which may potentially provide relevant information. These networking sites are good hunting grounds where important witnesses can be located. Photographs, videos, messages and forum posting are all digital data that could potentially be admissible for e-discovery in legal cases.
How Can Information Be Sourced from Networking Sites?
Enterprises, governments and law firms involved in litigation cases have realized the potential of networking sites in helping them with their cases. This information can be gathered in two ways:
·The first method is by searching the data that is freely available through postings in blogs and on walls, etc., that is publicly available.
·The second method is by identifying the owners of the information and establishing contact through friend requests on the sites.
Information that is sourced from networking sites may appear to be casual, but it cannot be ignored as it can provide a significant angle to legal investigators to aid them in pursuing an effective electronic disclosure process.
Limitations in Acquiring Data through Social Networking Sites
Though social networking sites can provide relevant information necessary for electronic discovery processing, some rules that define the methods of collecting data may be challenging. Those involved in lawsuits may try to invade the privacy of networking site users, which can evoke strong reactions. Moreover the conventional method used by the networking sites to collect and produce information is quite complex for legal investigators to comprehend. Due to this lack of expertise, they are often unable to maximize the use of electronic disclosure software, which results in unsatisfactory results.
What eDiscovery Practices Can Be Implemented on Networking Sites?
The FRCP, or Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which governs civil lawsuits in the U.S., is responsible for stressing ESI in e-discovery processes. The FRCP rules instruct lawyers to employ updated e-discovery practices and strategies. The ECPA, or Electronic Communications Privacy Act, does not permit third parties from acquiring data for electronic disclosure purposes without authorization. Recently the Philadelphia State Bar Association passed a regulation forbidding lawyers from using third parties to collect data from social networking sites. Attorneys had been known to ask third parties to send friend requests to access a user’s profile, which is now considered unethical. So these rules and procedures should be kept in mind before embarking on this route.
The Solution to the Networking Dilemma
In this connected day and age, attorneys have to demonstrate skillful tactics in sourcing the information available on social networking sites to provide the best e-discovery solutions for their clients. The information collected from these sites can be used to testify on various issues like determining the mental condition of the accused or establishing their presence at a specific location which they may have previously denied. Attorneys are generally intimidated by the complexities of e-discovery case management. Legal hassles can be handled with tact using the best of electronic discovery solutions which can help provide required evidence without the fear of treading on illegal territory.
In a bid to reduce litigation costs, there is a need to analyze the most prominent components of the electronic discovery procedure that contribute to higher costs. Most of the budget is drained by the processing and reviewing stages, causing corporations to seek alternatives. Some possible alternative approaches are discussed below.
- Less data retention through information management – This is one method that can assist in the reduction of e discovery costs to a large extent. Companies can institute a policy whereby all unnecessary documents that are not relevant for business prospects, and those that do not have any legal or compliance significance, be deleted and erased after a certain duration. An efficient document retention policy is most effective when it discards all wasteful data collected during the ongoing e-discovery process.
- A thorough assessment of your case and issues – Early case assessments can significantly help to reduce the excessive expenses involved in e disclosure cases. To accelerate early case assessments, legal teams need to have an understanding of the facts that govern the case without investing too much time in the process. Experts who are able to evaluate the case proficiently can execute better and quicker decisions to wrap up the case. A prolonged case incurs added expenditures. Early case assessments are conducted to facilitate identification of data that may have e discovery value, prioritize the relevant portion, collect it, process and analyze it in order to comprehend the case and derive the estimated costs for the eventual process of e discovery.
- Promoting in-house e discovery – In-house e discovery is one of the most useful methods of reducing e discovery costs. Bringing a portion of the process, or even the whole process in-house, can be quite cost-effective compared to the costs charged by outsourcing law firms or service providers. Having an in-house e discovery in operation provides better control and security enforcement. Thus, investing in litigation support software is much less expensive than allocating for service costs that are ever changing.
- Preservation and collection of less data – Preserving and collecting less data at every stage definitively reduces culling and reviewing time while also lowering costs.
- Processing of less data – When less data is preserved and collected, processing also becomes faster.
- Processing and reviewing in native format – The traditional methods of e discovery used converted image formats, such as TIFF, etc., for processing and reviewing documents. However these processes proved to be intensive and expensive. Thus, to avoid pitfalls, many prefer to do the processing and reviewing procedures in native or near native formats.
- Review less data, faster – The culling of data using techniques such as keyword search, concept search, de-duplication, fuzzy search, and others, can make it possible to review smaller amounts of data. This expedites the process and reduces legal investigation costs.
The aforementioned legal disclosure approaches are effective ways to reduce costs, but the extent of each procedure will differ as some may be more effective than others. Each one of these methods has its own advantages and drawbacks, and a combination of various techniques would perhaps yield the positive results that every organization is looking for.
