Situation

A Fortune 50 company had never taken action to implement a disposition process because of concerns that records might be prematurely destroyed. As a result, the company had accumulated fifty years’ worth of physical records and electronic information stored in email archives, file servers, backup tapes and numerous content repositories. The company sought assistance to remediate its legacy data and implement a go-forward defensible disposition process to combat the escalating costs of storage, added litigation risk and cost of discovery.

Solutions

Our professionals:

• Worked with legal, IT and business stakeholders to inventory all relevant legacy data stores and develop global data disposition criteria.
• Developed a strategy for the defensible disposition of legacy information in hard copy and electronic forms, including a phased implementation road map based on business priorities.
• Established a legal hold validation process to ensure records required for ongoing legal matters were excluded from the disposition process.
• Leveraged data analytics tools to support the evaluation of legacy information and perform quality assurance on disposition decisions.
• Helped develop a legally defensible disposition process to enable the company to conduct ongoing disposition of records and information in the “normal course of business.”
• Provided guidance, change management communications and training to inform and educate responsible employees on the disposition process.

Benefits

The company was able to achieve considerable cost savings associated with storage and management of both electronic information and physical records. The road map provided a phased implementation, enabling the company to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach and realize immediate benefits without overcommitting available resources. Furthermore, by establishing a defensible disposition process, the company was able to enhance access to information needed to support ongoing business and dispose of redundant, obsolete and transitory information with appropriate checks to prevent the premature disposal of information subject to legal hold.