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FRCP Still Posing Challenges: Page 3 of 7

"We started looking at email archiving before the amendments to FRCP," says Chin, explaining that Pinnacle is now using hardware from Mimosa to archive its email.

Apparently, not all users have been as proactive as Chin and his team. "We're seeing forward progress and momentum, but, overall, companies are not ready for this legislation," says Alan Armstrong, vice president of business development at archiving vendor Fortiva.

To illustrate his point, the exec highlighted thefindings of a recent survey by Fortiva, which revealed that a surprising number of firms are either unwilling or unable to get to grips with the realities of e-discovery.

"One in five companies have settled lawsuits because they didn't want to go through the headache and cost of discovering information," says Armstrong, painting a fairly negative picture of users' e-discovery capabilities.

Worryingly, many of the 90 firms surveyed by Fortiva are also taking a cavalier approach to how they manage the issue of legal hold. "Forty-three percent of the respondents were relying on end-users to refrain from deleting emails when they were required to put out a litigation hold," he says. "Relying on the good nature of people who may be under investigation is not good common practice."