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1 Management and Retention Dick Jensen Director, Information Technology Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Presentation on theme: "1 Management and Retention Dick Jensen Director, Information Technology Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP Toronto, Ontario, Canada"— Presentation transcript:

1 1 E-Mail Management and Retention Dick Jensen Director, Information Technology Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP Toronto, Ontario, Canada E-Mail: djensen@casselsbrock.com

2 2 Agenda The Evolution of E-Mail E-Mail: The Adolescent Years What are the Issues Retention vs. Destruction E-Mail Archiving Records Management vs. E-Mail Management Laws Governing E-Mail Retention Crystal Ball Conclusion Open Discussion

3 3 Our attorneys are drowning in a barrage of E-Mail messages. The flood is not going to stop, and the amount of messages will continue to get deeper. We, in the technology field, do not have the power to stop the downpour and we must determine how we are going to build the boats to save our attorneys from drowning. E-Mail Management and Retention

4 4 The Evolution of E-Mail Began as a disposable medium Casual communication Now treated similar to a memo or document

5 5 E-Mail: The Adolescent Years Late 90s: displacing Fax and paper-based mail delivery A typical user handles 80-100 messages per day A typical 3,000-user E-Mail system handles over one terabyte of E-Mail traffic annually

6 6 E-Mail: The Adolescent Years – continued The typical Exchange message store, assuming messages are not deleted, fills up in less than 27 days According to Gartner Group, 80% of an organization's knowledge is buried in the thousands of e-mails pulsing through the corporate Ethernet on a daily basis Server backups taking far too long

7 7 What are the Issues Quantity of messages Spam, Viruses Faxes arriving via E-Mail Blackberry Units Unified Messaging Media – Video Clips Scanned Images

8 8 What are the Issues – continued Restoration considerations –How long would it take to rebuild your server and restore the data –Firms feel crippled when they loose access to their E-Mail, calendar, contacts –Painfully slow and laborious to build a second E-Mail server, perform a restore from tape in order to get back some deleted E-Mail for an attorney

9 9 What are the Issues - continued Typical storage locations –Outlook PST – Corruption, difficult to manage and search –Document Management Systems – Manual user involvement –File System cumbersome for the user and they only do it when they have time

10 10 Retention vs. Destruction Why retain E-Mail? –Important history of my practice –Searchable when online –Data contributes to our Knowledge Management initiative –A user may not know that a message they send could turn out to be a key piece of evidence in a case –Ability to demonstrate, in court, that your firm practices a documented and firm-wide policy of retaining all E-Mail communications

11 11 Retention vs. Destruction - continued Why retain E-Mail? –What about the risk of a smoking-gun being found it is more likely that you will find key information that will help your case rather than hurt it –Robert Eisenberg, National Law Journal –manage the risk, dont eliminate it Purge the junk mail first Delete non-important messages Manually file client correspondence

12 12 Retention vs. Destruction - continued E-Mail Shredders –online services that encrypt E-Mail and destroy the keys after a period of time –messages are not actually deleted and only the encryption keys are removed –a Forensic record can be established that there was a message (sender, receiver, date, time) E-Mail can never really be destroyed –messages traverse intermediary computers –recipients can retain and forward messages

13 13 E-Mail Archiving Server level, set it and forget it Rules-based system to allow for different types of users –leave more data in mailbox for road warriors Ability to respond to discovery requests much more quickly and at a greatly reduced cost

14 14 E-Mail Archiving – continued Ability to search all folders with one search –contents of attachments, all E-Mail folders including custom folders Automatically inherit mailbox user rights –assistants generally have access to some information in their attorneys mailbox Access to archive remotely via standard remote access products Can be implemented with minimal user training

15 15 Records Management vs. E-Mail Management What is the difference? –The records management discipline is a well documented set of procedures and systems to preserve records for predetermined periods of time based on their value What is a record? –Related to business function of legal obligation –Recorded in some useable form –Authentic and reliable

16 16 Laws Governing E-Mail Retention There are few, if any, laws that deal directly with E- Mail. There are cases where courts are starting to treat E-Mail as normal business documents

17 17 Crystal Ball Use your E-Mail archive system as a backup tool so that a single E-Mail message can be easily recovered by the user themselves Comb your E-Mail data repository as part of your Knowledge management initiative

18 18 Conclusion There are numerous tools to assist with building the boats to save our attorneys from the E-Mail flood. You need to evaluate what kind of boat your firm needs and choose a company who can build it for you

19 19 E-Mail Management and Retention Dick Jensen Director, Information Technology Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP Toronto, Ontario, Canada E-Mail: djensen@casselsbrock.com


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