Recommind survey finds growing IT-legal gap

Recommind recently released results of a survey of IT and legal pros and found that the gap between the two departments is growing instead of shrinking. Recommind VP of Marketing, Craig Carpenter was surprised by these results, especially after seeing an improvement in the numbers last year.

Key findings include:

• In 2009, 67 percent of respondents described the  relationship between the two departments as “good” or “very good”; in 2010,  that number has dropped to 54 percent;
• In 2009, 37 percent of respondents reported that  IT and legal were working more closely together than the year before; that  number has dropped to 27 percent in 2010; and
• In 2009, 40 percent of respondents stated that  their IT department considered eDiscovery to be a high to very high priority;  in 2010, that number has dropped to 26 percent.

Carpenter attributes these changes to tightening budgets, shifting priorities and of course politics."IT's job is not to support legal, it's to allow [all] people to work more effectively. Legal's job is to protect the company from itself," Carpenter explained. Sometimes these two goals conflict or at least don't match up very well, and when you factor in the economic crisis over the last couple of years, IT is working with fewer resources. That results in eDiscovery projects getting moth-balled (or at least put on the back burner).

Carpenter says, IT doesn't have the personnel to work with legal and lay the hard ground work that needs to be done in any IT project of this size. He believes the ultimate solution is to have a person or staff that works between the two departments and speaks the language of legal and tech, but that's only happening in certain industries, such as pharma, and isn't likely to happen before some significant budgetary relief.

As we move into a more strict regulatory environment--Carpenter points to Toyota, Goldman Sachs and BP--eDiscovery needs to become a bigger priority, but until there is a bigger budget and better communication, its hard to see how that it is going to happen.

For more information:
- see the Recommind press release

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