Posts Tagged ‘regulatory’

Corporate records retention policies for many companies are afterthoughts with little understanding of how the company truly uses its documents/records/ESI. In my experience, many companies leave the decision of whether to keep records and for how long to their employees. This strategy is dangerous and costly when litigation is potentially possible. Allowing your employees total control over records and ESI drives the cost of eDiscovery up because you greatly multiple the number of possible storage ares you must check for responsive records. It also increases the risk of spoliation when a litigation hold is required.

The new administration in Washington DC has signaled that compliance with industry regulatory requirements will be a top priority in the coming months. How does your company prepare for the upcoming, but still unknown requirements?

The first thing you should do is understand where you are lacking when it comes to corporate best practices, especially around corporate data and retention. Do you have a retention policy and schedule? Have you updated it lately? Have employees been trained on it – regularly?

I received the following question from an individual during an Inside Counsel Webinar last week:

“State rules can and do differ from the federal rules (FRCP & Amendments). Yes, Judges do decide, but they can and do base decisions based on case law in other states as well as the federal rules. What impact does this have on the application of consistent policies in a corporation?”