The use of e-mail and other electronic data in court cases has spiked in recent years. But with such a profusion of data to sort through, the integrity and accuracy of this evidence can be put at risk. Follow these tips to ensure efficiency in your review and analysis.

On December 1, 2006, the rules for handling e-mail and electronic documents in discovery changed. A number of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) came into effect, marking a turning point in the way electronically stored information is handled in federal court civil cases. These amendments (specifically to Civil Rules 16, 26, 33, 34, and 37) have the greatest impact on e-mail review and analysis, which is often the least understood and most costly part of a case. E-mail represents a significant amount of a company's electronic data; it is also the most requested type of evidence in nearly every investigation.

As Director of Information Security for a Fortune 200 global energy corporation, I work hand-in-hand with our legal department to process e-mail requests and help them answer the most critical questions of any investigation. Over the course of my career, I've found the following tips to be the most critical rules of thumb for any organization that needs to preserve, analyze and produce e-mail.

Tip #1: What you don't know can hurt you

If only the old adage, "what you don't know won't hurt you," were true. You could simply not retain e-mails and minimize the burdens of such communications. But in today's increasingly interconnected world, that is no longer an option. E-mail flows freely across organizational boundaries, making it virtually impossible to delete all copies of any given message. Moreover, e-mails are increasingly becoming an important means to conduct business. As a result, enterprises are better off storing all business related e-mails for a reasonable period of time. This will allow a company better access to its business records, help avoid surprises relating to e-mails which others may have and also allow for isolated e-mails to be placed in context.

Tip #2: Time is Money

In a single case, multiple data requests may go back and forth between legal, IT and risk. I affectionately call this the "ping pong effect." These requests evolve over time as paralegals and attorneys broaden the custodians, date ranges and keywords that must be included in the response. Manual processes for identifying this information are an extreme burden, result in increased costs to all parties and can make it very difficult to respond to the request within the allotted timeline. Remember, deadlines are important particularly with the new FRCP rules in place.

Today, there are a number of technologies to help you automate this process and achieve results in substantially less time than it would take manually. At Constellation Energy, we have utilized solutions that have allowed us to substantially improve our response times, and likewise ease burdens on the lawyers.

Tip #3: Work smarter, not harder

E-mail volume is growing 30 percent per year and contains as much as 80 percent of a company's intellectual property. It also contains much irrelevant information such as "Hey Bob, are you free for lunch?" As companies try to reign in EDD costs and meet timelines required in litigation, they need to figure out a better way to analyze thousands or millions of e-mails and documents. A smarter approach is to use advanced analytical solutions to cull-down the data set to a smaller, more relevant data set prior to beginning the review and analysis process. These analytical solutions allow you to rapidly reduce the data set by eliminating duplicates and other non-relevant data. This in turn will save time and money, reducing the need to hire contract attorneys, move data offshore for review and overload internal resources.

Tip #4: Eliminate fire drills that consume late nights and weekends

Be proactive and standardize a process for handling e-mail discovery requests. Avoid an ad hoc approach for each case. This will only lead to frustration, mistakes and overall inefficiency. Accept the fact that e-mail is, and always will be, at the center of EDD and a fact of doing business. Work with a cross-functional team from legal, compliance, security and IT to create a repeatable process and policies to streamline the e-mail anal ysis while ensuring appropriate privacy protections. These guidelines should apply to all internal and external information requests.

Tip  #5: Ensure that evidence can stand up in court

Make sure to dot all of your "i's" and cross all of your "t's" before you enter the courtroom. When electronic evidence goes to court, it must be admissible. Since all data may not be stored in a central archive, it may be important to have proof of a forensically validated process for obtaining evidence and maintaining its integrity. Capture all of the tasks and document how chain of custody and security issues will be addressed. Lastly, the process may need to be validated by third-party forensics experts to further demonstrate that every measure was taken to preserve the accuracy and integrity of evidence.