Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50881
know what those issues should be dealt with best by, at least in the first instance, and a recognition under a comity basis, that is the best place to go. But that is in its infancy and there's lots more to come. BUILDING TIES BETWEEN IT AND LEGAL SCHWEIZER: Especially if you're looking at doing some of your electronic discovery in-house. It can't be something imposed by the legal department. You absolutely have to have the buy-in of the IT department and the support from them because they are the ones who control access to the server, who control the e-mail exchange server. So that is absolutely crucial. MACFARLANE: Someone can develop expertise in your IT department the same way you leverage off expertise from internal lawyers and not always have to deal with external law- yers. You can have the internal resource knowing the system. If you have to bring in an external expert, that's going to give you a big leg-up in efficiency, and someone understands what the external expert will be looking for. FROM CRISIS MODE TO PLANNING MODE FRIEDMAN: We talked about lawyers needing to have a cultural shift. I think a cultural shift internally in corpora- tions for e-discovery is changing it from crisis management to readiness planning. I do some work in the product recall area and most companies that have commercial goods have prod- uct recall plans for what they have to do if they have to recall a product. If they don't, they are in complete crisis mode and that's what happens in the e-discovery realm. MACFARLANE: It will be interesting to see how the law of spoliation develops in Canada. Is it going to be similar to the U.S. or different? Are we going to be able to take comfort from the fact we have known this stuff up front and put a reasonable plan in place or is it more of a trap? It will be interesting. CAMPBELL: I hope we don't go down the route we have in the U.S. I think we can avoid it, because I think the one thing that Canadian lawyers are attuned to is our obligation to reduce relevant documents, whereas in the U.S., their rule is you only produce what you are asked for. And I think that is what drives a lot of their confrontation. . . . So the big knock on what we're all doing is, are we destroying civil litigation? We have invented industries to take care of the growing amount of information that is available. It does have to be controlled and tamed, and I think I go back where Melanie started, with the -iscover reainess reenion oic iiaion o mee coner ocumen review orensic aa coecion euicaion eecronic courroom ecnooies rainin conerences ria rocessin reservaion ewor searc rooco winess examinaion -iin securi oicies coss reucion non ier -evience inormaion manaemen overnance ris comiance iiaion reareness 34 • JUNE 2010 Untitled-3 1 INHOUSE 11/27/09 11:10:17 AM