Having an end-to-end process in place for electronic discovery (e-discovery) and litigation management is critical, says Raquel Tamez, Principal/Deputy General Counsel, Litigation, Computer Sciences Corporation and speaker at the marcus evans Chief Litigation Officer Summit Fall 2013. Even if outside counsel and multiple service providers are involved, Chief Litigation Officers (CLOs) need to have a process, identify the various stakeholders, and determine and define their respective responsibilities. According to Tamez, that is the best approach to take.

How should CLOs approach e-discovery?

It is different for each company. There are opportunities for cost savings if companies can bring some of the data collection and processing in-house, but not every company has that capability or the appropriate litigation profile to justify the time and expense of doing so.

Nevertheless, CLOs should have a “process” in place whether entirely outsourced or entirely in-house or a hybrid. Having an end-to-end process for e-discovery is critical. CLOs may be inclined to simply hand-off the e-discovery function to its outside counsel who, in turn, utilize various service providers with different data processing capabilities and various document review platforms. There is a lack of efficiency and cost effectiveness with this hand-off approach. The better approach is for the CLO to have a robust, documented, end-to-end e-discovery process and “playbook” that outside counsel is required to follow. The process, ideally, should identify the CLO’s exclusive, full-service e-discovery service provider or at a minimum a list of service providers that have been vetted by the CLO’s legal staff and the company’s IT personnel. CLOs will, necessarily, have to invest time and some money to create and build out the process. These front-end costs will result in significant cost-savings in the long-run.

What is the next step? How does this lead to cost savings?

The key to cost-savings here is to have a repeatable process and not an ad hoc approach where the wheel must be reinvented every time a piece of litigation or an investigation is initiated. If the e-discovery process is well-executed, all relevant stakeholders, will know what to do, when do it, how to do it, and who to go to if any doubt. The transparency in the process leads to defensibility and ultimately, savings in both time and monies.