Non-U.S. Companies Struggle To Implement U.S.-Style Document Retention Policies

Many of us in the U.S. legal community know that developing and implementing a defensible document retention policy is important, if not crucial, to a company's data management. It can speed up the procedures in, or reduce the costs associated with document preservation and document production.

This common understanding, however, is often times not understood well enough by non-U.S. companies. Except for truly global companies that have plenty of experience in U.S. litigation, many non-U.S. companies do not know how broad and burdensome the discovery process can be. Similarly, many of them do not know that there is an obligation to preserve relevant documents pre-litigation. Accordingly, they are not always fully aware of the importance of a defensible document retention policy.