Darkness and light. Yin and yang. Plaintiffs and defendants. The world is full of equal and opposite forces. The solutions to many of life’s most perplexing challenges—be they philosophical, physical or corporate—often come in striking a balance between the tensions of those diametrically opposed forces.
The challenge of efficient and responsible data preservation is certainly no outlier to the concept of harmony. In forging an organization ever ready to respond to legal hold, audit or investigation, the simplest answer is to ensure the data required is available while disposing of that which may be irrelevant or risky. In litigation, failure to responsibly manage that data can result in court sanctions and other penalties. And as pointed out by Gibson Dunn’s 2014 Year-End E-Discovery Update, litigants can expect “more sanctions decisions generally, even with the adoption of the proposed amendment to Rule 37(e), as the challenges and complexities of preservation and timely review and production of electronically stored information (ESI) grow.”
