Be proactive.

Don't wait to be on the receiving end of a subpoena or regulatory investigation before acting. Whether it is because of Enron, Elliot Spitzer, or the Wall Street Journal, regulators and the courts have become increasingly aggressive in enforcing regulations, all of which involve e-discovery. Courts view e-mails as the place to find out who knew what and when in civil, criminal, or patent litigation. Sooner or later, it will happen to you. So be proactive and invest in processes and products to minimize the impact of e-discovery on your organization.

What you don't know can hurt you.

If only the old adage ("what you don't know won't hurt you") were true. You could simply delete all e-mails and minimize the risk of someone using them against you. But in today's increasingly inter-connected world, that is no longer an option. E-mail flows freely across organizational boundaries, making it impossible to destroy all copies of any given message. Enterprises are better off storing all business-related e-mails and knowing what they contain. Ultimately, when you sit down to determine your legal strategy (e.g., "do we settle or fight?"), it's not unlike playing a game of poker. By storing e-mails, you not only know your cards but you also know the cards that your opponent may have.

Pick your partner carefully.

Given that keyword search tools from e-mail archives or other vendors aren't sufficient, you'll need to pick an e-discovery partner. There are a wide range of e-discovery products and services to choose from. Whatever you decide, make sure that your chosen solution has everything it takes to address the problem: a single interface to all of your e-mail repositories so nothing is missed; the linking of e-mails into discussion threads to establish who knew what and when; the ranking of e-mail search results by relevance; and so on.

Take e-discovery products for a test drive.

Don't take the word of an e-discovery vendor. Ask them to install their product in your environment and try it out before you buy. Ask the solution vendors to provide customer references and case studies of enterprise deployments. Speak with their existing customers to learn about the solution as well as the company. It is worth spending the time to evaluate before you buy.

Document processes and best practices.

Document your end-to-end e-discovery processes, from collection to analysis to review to production. Capture all the tasks and document how each task addresses chain of custody, spoliation, and security issues. Outline all the parties involved in each task and their roles and responsibilities. Conduct post-mortem analyses after every large case or several small cases to identify opportunities for improvement. This will help ensure the highest return on your investments in automating and streamlining your e-discovery processes.

This article is an excerpt from Aaref Hilaly's article, "So You Bought An E-Mail Archive System. Now What?" originally published in the July 2006 issue of E-Discovery Advisor Magazine. Subscribers can read the full article -- which discusses what it takes to go beyond e-mail archiving and build the best e-discovery and compliance program for your company -- at http://Advisor.com/doc/18144.