The e-Litigation Blog team had a chance to catch up with Bryan Ghows who is chairing the Corporate Counsel Session on Day 1 of the Conference.
Bryan brings unique insights from both sides of legal practice – as a lawyer in private practice specialising in IP / IT law at Singapore law firm, Unilegal LLC; and prior to that, fifteen years as corporate counsel at Microsoft and IBM.
At Microsoft, Bryan was the lead attorney for the Windows division and dealt with legal issues relating to all Windows products. The “reasonable anticipation of litigation” standard adopted by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the United States meant that companies like Microsoft, with stringent compliance policies, was constantly issuing litigation hold notices. Bryan’s role as corporate counsel for Microsoft involved administering the company’s litigation hold processes as well as pre-litigation records management and litigation readiness counseling.
We asked Bryan what he considered to be the foremost challenge facing corporate legal departments today.
He answered that the exponential growth of email and the proliferation of electronically stored information has changed the way organisations approach litigation, due diligence and regulatory investigations, both from a legal and operational standpoint. In complex litigation today, document review encompasses anywhere between 60 – 90% of the total litigation cost. There is a sense that in-house lawyers must step up to the mark quickly as the disciplined management of electronic data is increasingly a core skillset of corporate counsel; and the application of “best practices” to legal holds and records management paramount in driving the imperative to manage ballooning litigation cost.
“In Asia, the unique challenges arising from being new to electronic discovery means that legal professionals, both in-house and in practice, find themselves on a steep learning curve” says Bryan, “we have been seeing an increased demand for legal professionals with e-discovery expertise to help corporations navigate tricky e-discovery issues and manage compliance risk“.
Additionally, the embrace of emergent internet technology by companies means that their legal departments continually grapple with information risk from new sources, such as Web 2.0 tools, social media, cloud computing, unified communication and virtualization. These technologies present e-Discovery challenges that will keep in-house legal professionals (and their panel law firms) on their toes!
continued @ Electronic Litigation Challenges for Corporate Counsel: An Interview with Bryan Ghows.
