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The CIO vs. General Counsel

When it comes to information management, power may be shifting from IT execs to lawyers. Should you be afraid?

Who decides what happens to information inside the enterprise -- how and where to store it, who gets access to it, and when can and should it be gotten rid of? Typically, those decisions fall to the CIO and IT execs. After all, they run the systems that produce and store data.

But in today's climate, power is shifting from IT to legal counsel, particularly in policy decisions about retention and disposition.

"Two years ago, if the general counsel walked into CIO's office and said 'We need to start retiring data,' the CIO would've politely told him to pound sand. Today that conversation goes quite a bit differently."

So says Craig Carpenter, general counsel and VP of marketing at Recommind, a vendor of enterprise search and e-discovery software.

Given that Carpenter is himself a general counsel, his opinion may be skewed toward members of his own fiefdom. But other discussions I've had with IT execs and vendors bear this out. The lawyers are getting more clout when it comes to information management policies.

That's because lawyers are the ones on the hook in litigation. If a court case implodes because legal counsel couldn't find critical information, or said that information didn't exist when it did, they suffer the wounds.

Given the starring role that electronically stored information (ESI) plays in legal disputes, it's no surprise your lawyers want to make sure that e-mail, Office files, blogs, contracts, etc., are handled to their satisfaction. That includes storage, indexing, categorization, searchability, retention, and destruction.

This doesn't mean IT has no voice. In fact, the general counsel has to rely on IT quite heavily. CIOs and IT execs can demonstrate leadership by reaching out to inside counsel to construct policies and processes that are mutually acceptable.

I'd love to hear from IT and legal pros among our readers. Do you see a similar power shift? How does it affect you, and do you anticipate a positive or negative outcome? Let me know.

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