More and more, corporate legal teams are proactively searching for ways to reduce litigation risk, gain control over escalating costs, and increase their ability to manage the discovery process more efficiently. Each new matter creates yet another fire drill. Accessing potential evidence is a challenge—and predicting the total cost of litigation can be even more challenging. All of this, coupled with increased complexities in discovery response, sends corporations into a constant state of crisis management. Corporations need an actionable, defensible process, customized for the business, to efficiently respond in today's environment.

Litigation is inevitable. How ready are you?
Gaining control starts with assessing your current discovery management processes in the areas of cost, risk and cycle time efficiencies. In a recent survey of over 350 corporate counsel, approximately 40% rated themselves as "proactive" when it came to litigation readiness, and yet only 26% acknowledged they had a discovery response workflow in place. Furthermore, just 26% claimed to have a litigation hold process implemented with IT and only 29% believed they had appropriate processes in place for collecting potential evidence in a legally defensible manner. How prepared are you?

Assessment is the first step to improvement
Fios offers a quick Litigation Readiness Assessment to help you determine how prepared your company is to respond to future discovery requests. The assessment identifies gaps and areas of risk as well as opportunities for "quick wins" and immediate successes. The resulting report provides a baseline for process improvement as well as offers a good overview of the required people, processes and technology essential for your ideal level of litigation readiness.

At the conclusion of the engagement, you will be able to:

• Assess readiness in each step of the discovery response process
• Determine overall level of readiness for litigation response
• Explore potential "root causes" where there is a lack of readiness
• Outline possible impacts of a lack of readiness
• Plan for action in specific areas to reduce litigation risk, gain control over costs and make process improvements over time

What can you expect?
It takes approximately two weeks to complete the assessment and conduct a debrief on the report. The time requirement is minimal for the value you'll receive in return. The service is initiated with a kick-off meeting. This can be onsite or via phone conference.

During this meeting we will walk you through the steps and gain a better understanding of your expectations and desired outcomes. The assessment itself is web-based and takes a couple of hours to complete. Fios then requires about one week to perform the analysis and create a custom report. The engagement concludes at the end of the two week period with a debrief meeting to review the results and discuss recommended next steps.

The ultimate goal of the Litigation Readiness Assessment is to enable you to take action and provide direction for future process improvement. Technology alone is not the answer. Efficient discovery management also requires a process-oriented approach, with legal domain expertise and end-to-end electronic discovery services.

Fios Discovery Management Services take an iterative approach, using a series of mandated electronic discovery transactions to develop repeatable business processes. The goal for each project is to institutionalize process improvements which reduce risk, ensure greater cost predictability and create smoother, more efficient workflows. The service allows organizations to organically fund these improvements as opposed to taking “big bang” approach that requires discretionary expenditure. Fios re-invests a portion of the revenue received from ongoing electronic discovery engagements in direct process improvements at the client site.

Spoliation and Sanctions: Balancing the Risk
You are faced with the obligation to preserve evidence, but it's costly. What happens if you choose not to preserve? What are your risks? There is a wide range of possible penalties, including monetary, issue, expert and case-related sanctions. The resulting costs can range from minimal fines and escalate to terminating sanctions. Fios helps you fully understand what the end result might be if you choose not to fulfill your preservation obligation. Fios helps you strike an appropriate balance by delineating the relevant factors that a court will consider when evaluating a spoliation allegation.

Fios also helps to facilitate a meaningful dialog between all major stakeholders, including the general counsel, CIO, CFO and outside counsel. We understand the needs of each functional area and how to craft the best solution to maximize use of all available resources. With Fios, you can be confident discovery will be managed quickly, accurately, predictably—and, with minimal disruption to your staff.

Fios is your choice for end-to-end discovery management services
Fios is a tier-one electronic discovery services provider for corporations and their law firms. Our full range of services, and process-oriented approach, enables companies to:

• Capture electronic documents in a secure, scalable enterprise repository
• Meet preservation obligations when litigation is anticipated by quickly and accurately identifying relevant documents throughout the enterprise and ensuring they are not inadvertently destroyed
• Collect, process, review and produce responsive documents through a process-oriented approach that is fast, efficient, predictable and legally defensible
• Retain produced evidence in an easily accessible repository for future requirements