Guidelines

What guidelines can my organization follow to mitigate the risks of email?

Given the present trends in the use of email records in court and investigations, here are a few guideposts for any organization to consider:

1. The legal system is skeptical of early, systematic destruction of email records: therefore, wise organizations should avoid it with respect to records of more important people.
   
2. Email records are not the property of employees. Those records define the rights and responsibilities of the enterprise. The enterprise should store them centrally (rather than just on employee PCs or mobile devices), and keep them after employees leave.
3. The keeping of e-records is different than being able to read them. It normally seems hard to justify expensive efforts to keep older records immediately readable, even though continued retention makes sense.
4. The biggest mistake is to destroy records too early. A bit lesser mistake is to possess records, but not know it or not be able to find them. A much lesser mistake is to be unable to easily read old records that you possess.
5. Email records of some people are more legally valuable than the records of others. The people who create the most important records are usually executives, auditors, lawyers, managers and decision-makers. Their email justifies more generous retention. The people who create less legally valuable email are hourly employees.
   
6. The new rules of civil procedure expect litigants to survey their records at the outset of a lawsuit. But once a lawsuit is filed, time is precious. A corporation does itself a favor by conducting some of that survey before litigation starts. The law motivates better knowledge of records, better record organization and better record search-ability (at least for more recent records).

All of the foregoing implies that corporations have reason to implement competent email archival systems. Such systems enable central storage of email records in a manger that facilitates record preservation, search and retrieval.

Contact us for a free 30 minute email policy consultation.

© Copyright Benjamin Wright 2008. © Copyright Messaging Architects 2008. This article is not legal advice. If an enterprise needs legal advice, it should consult a lawyer.