Consider purging data

Insurance industry counsel should consider telling their clients to get rid of backup data while rules preventing this still do not exist in Canada, Samuel Soloman, chairman and founder of DOAR Litigation Consulting, told delegates and counsel attending an ARC Group of Canada seminar on Oct. 25 in Toronto.
Policies in the United States prevent or inhibit the destruction of electronic forms of documentation, including backup data. However, what happens is that companies end up with thousands upon thousands of backup tapes.
Soloman predicts a working group currently existing in Canada will come up with guidelines not dissimilar from those in the United States when it comes to e-discovery.
In the United States, every judge cites the Sedona working group for their policies, Soloman said. With that in mind, he recommended that insurance companies figure out where their backup tapes are, how many there are, what they cover and whether or not they can they be destroyed now, before new rules mean they need to be kept.
Soloman, who was discussing federal e-discovery rules in the United States, recommends that Canadian insurance companies work with their information technology (IT) departments to determine where the company data is, where is it being stored, how is it being backed-up and so forth.
Focus on record management, Soloman said. Look at how people are preserving data and talk to outside counsel.
He warns the biggest mistake a number of companies make is using archival material for backup purposes. Archival material, used to restore the system somewhere else in the event of a disaster, is not the same as backup material for a lost email or file.