Spending on Legal Data Holds and Custody too High for Most

Like a majority of organizations, your firm probably overspends on legal settlements, legal services and expenses in IT to find, produce, protect and preserve information in response to legal requests and holds on information.

Recent news about events at Oracle Corporation — see Forbes (link below) and the Wall Street Journal articles (link below) — confirm that legal requests for information are not confined to any one industry nor size organization. Nor is the problem confined to the U.S., as the recent Bloomberg article about information the European Union is seeking from BHP Billiton (link below).

How much is too much?
Based on the benchmarks conducted by the IT Policy Compliance Group (IT PCG) — about two-in-ten firms — are spending 16-to-18 times more on legal services, settlements and internal expenses to find, produce, protect and preserve information than the organizations with most mature practices.

While this is the extreme case, a majority of organizations — seven-in-ten — are spending 5-to-6 times more on legal settlements, legal fees, and internal expenses to find, produce, protect and preserve information in response to legal requests for information.

Find out what works to improve results and reduce expenses
Visit the IT Policy Compliance Group (www.itpolicycompliance.com), play with the interactive benchmarking tools (link below) and download your own copy of the benchmark research report, Improving Results for the Legal Custody of Information (link below).

The interactive tools and benchmark research provide fact-based insight that will enable you to assess:

– The maturity of your firms’ practices
– What your peers are spending on legal settlements, fees and IT expenses
– How much you can save by improving practices
– Which practices your organization can target to improve results and spend less

Interactive tools at IT PCG:
www.itpolicycompliance.com/interactive-tools 
Research Report at IT PCG:
www.itpolicycompliance.com/research_reports/it_governance/read.asp?ID=13
Forbes:
www.forbes.com/markets/2008/09/04/oracle-software-update-markets-equity-cx_ra_0904markets37.html
Wall Street Journal: 
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/09/03/softwar-smackdown-discovery-flap-ends-badly-for-oracles-ellison/
Bloomberg:
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pic=20601081&sid=afc0XEbY5.kM&refer=australia

Jim Hurley

Tags: custody, data, information, IT compliance, legal, research, spend