Addressing And Managing The "Email Problem" With Records Retention And eDiscovery

As a result of the explosion of email over the past five years, email has become a major issue for companies when dealing with records retention and eDiscovery.

What makes email different? A number of factors.

Most prevalent is the sheer volume of email. Unlike several other types of electronic records (e.g. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files), email is used in large part for conversations involving multiple replies and recipients. Email is extremely quick and easy to create. This results in a very high number of separate emails on a single topic of conversation. When dealing with eDiscovery requests, each separate email must be dealt with. While automated technology can assist, to the extent the human element is required, the processing and resource time can be multiplied exponentially as a result of the number of separate emails dealing with a single topic or conversation.