Social Media Discovery: We Are Woefully Unprepared!

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2013-05-22 07:22:37Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. It has been a topic du jour, but social media discovery does not seem to be gaining the mindshare one might expect given the explosion in usage of social media. Almost 65% of respondents in eDJ’s social experience survey indicate using external social networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) at work.

I will not go into the litany of case law regarding the discoverability of social media in criminal and civil litigation. There are many JDs out there more qualified to dig into precedents and what they mean. Suffice it to say that social media is potentially discoverable and ignoring it could lead to sanctions, adverse inferences, and higher than expected eDiscovery costs.

Given the speed with which social media has been adopted by users, it is not a surprise to find that companies are behind in addressing the challenges of social media discovery. What is surprising is just how far behind the data suggests companies are. First, less than half of respondents (41%) report even have usage policies in place for social media. In contrast, over 85% of respondents indicate that a usage policy is in place for email.

Even more alarming, though, is the fact that less than 20% of respondents have a plan in place to collect and preserve this type of social media should the need arise.

It is one thing to not explicitly cover social media in retention policies, or to not proactively archive social media, but to completely ignore social media in eDiscovery plans and strategies is just plain ignorant. In fact, for non-regulated companies, it is likely a good idea to not proactively archive and retain social media given that so much of it tends to be non-business-related. A lack of a plan of action to discovery social media when necessary, however, will only serve to increase costs – whether that be from sanctions, adverse inferences, or the higher costs of eDiscovery when not prepared. It’s not as if there are not many products and/or services that can deliver social media discovery. Check out all the solutions that support social media as an ESI source here.

eDJ’s social media survey is still running – please let your voice be heard and take the survey here. In addition, I will be speaking about this topic and diving further into the survey results on the InsideCounsel webinar: Social Media and E-Discovery or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Digital Ephemera. The webinar is Thursday, May 30 at 1pm ET. Click here to register for it.

Barry Murphy can be reached at barry@eDJGroupInc.com for offline comments or questions. His active research topics include information governance, Predictive Coding, and the impact of social media on eDiscovery. Barry’s latest research report is Predictive Coding: What You Need To Know Now.

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