When litigation strikes, or when the company is served with a subpoena or government investigation, you will be called to oversee the data collection and production process. Are you ready to report up the chain that the path recommended by outside counsel, or in some cases an e-discovery vendor, is the right one for your company and for the matter? Are you being advised to deploy IT resources to copy multiple email accounts when you have an email system that allows you to preserve emails in place? Are you defending spoliation motions because a relevant employee's email account was deleted after they departed the company? Securing a basic understanding of the key IT systems in your company can reduce spend, direct energy to the case merits and strategy instead of discovery disputes, and reduce business disruption and strain on internal resources.

With that, GC's confronting litigation-related issues need to know:

1. Where emails are stored and for how long.