Business litigation is inherently complex. Documents are measured by the box-full and analyses of legal issues and risks recycle constantly.

According to research carried out by CommVault, almost three quarters of UK organisations have already suffered when IT systems failed to find and deliver documents, files and emails needed during company legal disputes in a timely manner.

This often results in financial penalties.
Despite improvements in infrastructure, organisations are still in a poor state of affairs when it comes to recognising the value of the data they hold and how best it should be managed.

What is clear is that there are growing opportunities for the reseller to address this since the legal demands being made are not only of the corporate entity but by default of its IT infrastructure which is failing to support the process effectively.

The research also shows that the problem exists outside the UK with an average of 30 per cent of organisations in Germany and the Netherlands feeling that they would be at risk of receiving financial penalties if asked to produce specific documentation to support a legal case.

If this is so common, as the research implies, why has so little been done to address the problem?

We believe there are three main reasons. Firstly, and our data showed this clearly, despite the regularity of problems of data retrieval for legal teams a high proportion of the respondents (83 per cent) did believe their company had adequate technology to ensure ‘on demand’ production of critical data for legal disclosure.

Second, companies are often unaware of the full costs of legal actions so don’t prioritise accordingly.

Third, personal liability can escalate to including personal liability for the IT director if you take into account the opinions of 58 per cent of the respondents.

Our research suggested that in the UK 30 per cent of companies have been financially penalised as a result of losing a case. And the real costs can go far beyond those handed down by the court.

Resellers can tell customers about the potential damage to company reputations, the loss of customers, the damage to staff morale leading to missed opportunities and the cost of the diversion of management time that can result.

Business is increasingly litigious so more attention needs to be paid to the performance of the IT system when it comes to prompt document retrieval.

Some 56 per cent of respondents still feel that they risk financial penalties as a consequence of not being able to find certain documents.

Companies need to more closely review and manage document retention and destruction policies.

The consequences of document mishandling and spoiling can be severe, yet the research still showed this to be a common problem for a large proportion of companies interviewed.

Some 74 per cent of UK business and 70 per cent of German companies questioned in our survey had recorded at least one serious problem when information retrieval had been demanded by the courts.

For technology companies in particular, and especially for the defendants, patent cases today present special concerns since the factual issues are so broad and deep.

It is critical then that there exists an in-house defining of requirements for retention of all relevant categories of documents – and in particular e-mails.

Vince Blackall is channel director at CommVault

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