Metadata, terabytes, forensic images, slack space, email archives. So when did they teach this in law school? For most in-house counsel, these are not terms even Webster knew existed when you were in law school, nor are you likely to use them every day in your legal practice. But for the subset of in-house counsel who manage the company’s eDiscovery activities, these terms get committed to memory very quickly. There are numerous best practice treatises and articles that outline the case law requirements, the tools that can be utilized and the overall architecture of an eDiscovery program. And good as all of these are, what seems to be missing is the practical application of all those great principles to a profit-making entity. Because be clear on one thing – the corporation exists for its bottom line. If you are not a law firm, all the legal and risk management theory in the world is not going to matter when you are trying to convince a messaging manager why she or he needs 12 more servers for your discovery efforts. This paper attempts to provide at least some practical guidance on how you might go about developing such a program INSIDE the company firewall and live to talk about it.

Let’s begin with, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model. It models all the phases in the discovery lifecycle. Each of the phases presents a unique challenge to the in-house practitioner...