E-Discovery Challenges of Multinational Corporations
I recently came across an article on www.executivecounsel.com which discusses the challenges faced by multinational organizations when trying to implement a comprehensive approach to e-discovery. According to the article, the sheer size of multinational corporations often presents the biggest obstacles since these companies are prone to frequent acquisitions and are so geographically diverse. I agree that these are big challenges, but I have seen a few others that were even more formidable.
After the ability to ingest and search billions of records in seconds is conquered, any good e-discovery system must be able to handle the amazing number of languages used within a single organization and must be able to segregate the enterprises’ data by the organization, jurisdiction and personnel. Only once those problems are solved can a multinational organization feel free to merge with any company world-wide and not have to worry about the integration of various technologies and privacy levels for each country/subsidiary.
This is of interest to me since I am scheduled to attend the E-Discovery Seminar for Pharma & Biotech next week and many of the companies in attendance are going to be large multinational pharmaceutical companies who face similar issues. The ability to scale to any size has been a claim that virtually every vendor in the e-discovery space. But, in reality, when faced with large scale multinational companies, most solutions are unable to handle the billions of documents that must be ingested, searched, reviewed and produced.
Frankly, reactive e-discovery vendors (or mere point solutions) should be immediately dismissed since they are not up to the task. First, these guys are outrageously expensive (especially with per gigabyte pricing models) and second, they are far too risky since it is nearly impossible to track down (and preserve) all of the ESI involved on a custodian basis. Instead these multinationals should implement a truly scalable archive that can provide an audit trail showing what ESI is stored, where the data originated and when it was reviewed/produced to opposing counsel. Coupled with a powerful search engine, the combination will immediately cut down on costs while eliminating the need for costly and inefficient ESI collections (not to mention enable true early case assessment).
Handling e-discovery for a multinational is not easy, but the technology to achieve it in a cost efficient and defensible manner is out there. Don’t believe me? Just ask UBS, Wells Fargo and others!
