CGOC Summit 2009

1:30 pm – Welcome Remarks
Today, every company manages legal holds to mitigate risk, but how they do so has a huge impact on the corporate bottom line. In tough economic conditions, the choices the legal department makes for how and what to preserve and retain are critical. This session will look at retention and preservation practices, their relative cost footprints, and offer ways to take a “greener” approach.

Flying Blind through the Storm of the Century
Eric Saltzman, EVP Business Alliances and Strategy, PSS Systems
The role of the head of litigation and the litigation team in forecasting and managing discovery costs is more important than ever in the current economic environment. Providing accurate forecasts and reducing cost while facing greater uncertainty and potentially higher volumes of litigation is a daunting task. This panel will explore ways to assess the likely impact of the economic slowdown on your litigation volume and expense, propose a framework for the CGOC and its members to share information that will improve each member’s ability to forecast and control costs, and provide recommendations for measuring and reducing the discovery related costs arising from the over-retention of data.

Quantifying the Benefits of Good Retention Practices
Richard Gomes, Senior Vice President, Citigroup
A good retention program not only ensures business records are retained properly, it helps identify where information is stored in the corporation and ensures that expired data is disposed properly. This session will focus on developing and quantifying the business case for an effective program that can help the legal department, business groups and senior management appreciate the cost of their current retention practices and the savings improvement will bring.

Calculating The “Total Cost of Information” — A Wakeup Call for More Effective Information Management
Jay Brudz, Senior Corporate Counsel, GE
Implementing good retention practices and information hygiene is often met with resistance from business groups and even the legal department. By calculating the true loaded cost of information to the corporation — including the cost to manage, discover and litigate it — companies can make much better cost/benefit decisions. Moreover, transparently allocating the real cost of information can reduce unnecessary discovery budget surprises and improve allocation of discovery costs.

Reception and Dinner

9:00am - The Efficacy vs. Efficiency of Search in Preservation & Collection
Matthew I. Cohen, Managing Director, AlixPartners
Kevin Brady, Partner, Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutz
The recent decisions on the level of difficulty and standard of care in determining search terms for production and review cast a shadow over using keyword search for preservation and collection. Given the extraordinary challenges in determining a valid set of keywords at the outset of a matter and the impact of the decisions made, the efficiencies promised by keyword- based holds are wiped out by the overwhelming efficacy issues. This expert panel will discuss the issues related to search terms for preservation, collection and review.

Value Based Information Retention — Mandate for the new Economy
Lorrie Lueillig, Shareholder, Ryley Carlock & Applewhite
Led by global retention program leaders in the world’s largest corporations, this discussion will examine how companies are managing the challenges of retention and the opportunities for bottom line benefit. The panelists will share their experiences and best practices for retention management in the current economic climate.

From Zero to Sixty — Changing Your Legal Holds Process and Practices
Daniel Kulakofsky, Managing Counsel, Director of Electronic Discovery, Travelers
Good legal holds practices are a pre-requisite for improvements in retention practices and data management efficiency. This session will highlight how to define a new process, galvanize a large or distributed legal team to change old habits, gain management and staff support, and roll out a new program.

When to Start and When to Stop Legal Holds
Cathy Muir, Counsel, Hunton & Williams; former Senior Corporate Counsel, Sprint Nextel
Jim Mitchell, Managing Director, Huron Consulting Group
Two of the most pernicious issues in preservation are what triggers a legal hold and how to release holds. This panel will discuss what constitutes a legal trigger, how to document the decision making and disposition best practices for the holds and collected data.

Reception and Dinner