SHO R T TA K E S

Be Ready for Litigation

David Cohen, chair of Reed Smith’s Records & E-Discovery Group, believes in litigation readiness beyond basics such as legal holds. “It includes knowing where your data is, keeping it as long as needed for business needs and legal compliance, and then eliminating data that has served its purpose and is no longer subject to any legal hold. He has a threestep plan for data hygiene: an up-to-date data map/ inventory; knowing what you need to keep and for how long; and regular remediation of obsolete data.

Source: Lexology

Detoxing from BigLaw

Meyling "Mey" Ly Ortiz, managing counsel – labor & employment for Toyota Motor North America, discusses in Above the Law a phenomenon she recognized after moving in-house seven years ago, “detoxification,” which she describes as “culture shock” experienced by new in-house counsel – including night sweats. “I clearly remember waking in the middle of the night in a panic because I thought I’d forgotten to bill,” she writes.

“I was anxious because without billing and without any work product like a brief or discovery to show, I wasn’t sure how to ‘prove’ to my new boss that I had indeed been working.” She says that when she was free of the blaming/CYA culture of law firms, she learned to get comfortable taking risks and exercising judgment — even without all the facts and data. “I had to learn to let go of fear of failure and accept uncertainty and that if I made a mistake, we would address, learn and move on.

Source: The Meybe