eDiscovery for Small Business and Startups: Are You An
Organized Data Saver?
Author: Eric Everson, MBA, MSIT-SE, JD Candidate*
Data touches every small business and startup alike. While there may be a few outliers, generally
every business today generates and collects data. The founders of most startups and small
businesses that I meet are primarily concerned with growing their businesses
and generally do not have time to stop and concern themselves with the
possibility of some future litigation.
As it turns out, preparing for the possibility of litigation can be as
simple as establishing a value added electronic records management (ERM)
solution for the business.
Let’s face it, as prices have come down, data storage hardware
is cheap. Today you can pick up a terabyte
of external storage for under $100. With
all of this digital storage readily available, it is easy as a business manager
to adopt a “save it all” mentality when it comes to data archives (email,
documents, spreadsheets, reports, databases, etc). This is where we begin our eDiscovery for
startups and small businesses… become an organized data saver!
Perhaps you’ve never heard of eDiscovery or are new to the
idea of data preservation in anticipation of litigation. The truth is, many business owners learn
about eDiscovery for the first time when it is raised by their attorney in
response to a litigation hold notice. As
computers have streamlined business practices, an area of technology law called
eDiscovery has blossomed. In effect, eDiscovery
rules subject business owners to very strict penalties for purposely deleting,
damaging, or withholding data. In eDiscovery,
data is often referred to electronically stored information (ESI) and there is
an abundance of legal procedure and case law that requires responsible preservation
and production of this data.
One way a small business owner can protect themselves
against eDiscovery penalties is to become an organized data saver. What this requires is often simple, which is
creating some organization and methodology to the data your business
saves. Some businesses are required by
law to save certain kinds of data for many years and yet some data can be
discarded routinely. What you want from
your ERM solution is organization that allows you to search effectively through
the data that you archive and to establish a reasonable data retention policy
that prevents you from creating a data landfill. Do not simply dump your data into a hard drive
and forget about it, keep it organized either by date, transaction, project, or
some other criteria that fits your business.
When organizing your data retention policy consider things
like whether the data is required to be stored by law for a statutory period (i.e.
number of years for personnel files after termination), who created the data,
how long are other companies keeping the same kind of data, what criteria is
used to sort data, who is responsible for the data management and cleanup? There are many similar questions to ask, but
these few examples will get you started as you begin to become an organized
data saver.
A quality ERM solution is not expensive to establish, but they
do require active management which is an operational cost that every business
manager should anticipate. Not only will
becoming an organized data saver help if you ever face a lawsuit, but it will
also help you strategically streamline your data to grow your business today.
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*About the Author: Eric Everson is a 3L law
student at Florida A&M University – College of Law where he will graduate
in May 2013. Prior to law school he
earned an MBA and Masters in Software Engineering while working within the U.S.
telecommunications industry. The views and opinions presented in this
blog are his own and are not to be
construed as legal advice. Eric
Everson currently serves on the Board of Governors for The Florida Bar Young
Lawyers Division Law Student Division and is the President of the Electronic
Discovery Law Student Association at Florida A&M University – College of
Law. Follow @iamtechlaw
