SUMMER 2020 TODAY’S GENER AL COUNSEL
E-Discovery
Overcoming Budget Hurdles Due to Covid-19 Litigation By Mike Hamilton
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ack in March — prior to the proliferation of widespread Covid-19 preventative measures — Exterro took a closer look at how in-house legal departments are planning to manage their spend over the next year. The 4th Annual Study of Effective Legal Spend Management identified a number of budgetary plans and hurdles that in-house departments are working to reconcile, which reflected their strategies and expectations for 2020. Now three months into a global pandemic, it’s fair to say that expectations for many organizations have changed. “I absolutely think budgets change now,” says Linda Luperchio, Director of Information Lifecycle Governance &
E-Discovery at The Hanover Insurance. Luperchio expects litigation expenses to increase globally due to Covid-19 and the disruptions it is causing with employee movement — not to mention potential class-action suits. “We have a small [litigation] lull right now, but I think it’s going to hit with a vengeance,” says Luperchio. “There’s going to be worker’s comp [suits], there’s going to be all sorts of different claims that no one has ever experienced before, and there’s just no way around it, it’s going to hit e-discovery, because e-discovery fits with just about every lawsuit now.” Survey data from the Legal Spend Management report showed that only 19 percent of in-house legal departments
expected an increase in their budgets as a whole heading into 2020 — but 51 percent acknowledged that litigation ranked as the highest risk for increased legal costs, followed by compliance at 22 percent. The specter of increased litigation has, for many, become a fullblown fear. “I don’t think it’s avoidable,” adds Luperchio. “I think we’re going to see an uptick that we couldn’t have planned for when we did the budgets because nobody knew Covid-19 was coming our way.” Heading into 2020, in-house legal departments were, by and large, already looking to reduce risks and costs, and increase operational efficiency through
