There has been a substantial push over the past several years for organizations to adopt an information governance (IG) program. Many legitimate reasons justify its implementation. For serial litigants or companies that are in highly regulated industries, IG measures such as information retention policies and a litigation hold process can facilitate the reduction of discovery costs and risks. Effective IG also includes information security and cyber security initiatives, which help secure company information from internal and external threats. IG additionally encompasses data privacy measures, which can safeguard consumer and employee information and satisfy domestic and cross-border data protection laws.
Beyond all this, a new trend supporting IG focuses on the benefits such a program offers in connection with proportionality-related litigation requirements. Proportionality, which generally seeks to balance the benefits of discovery with the burdens of compliance, has become one of the principal touchstones of federal discovery practice since the enactment of the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
