Sunbelt Software White Paper Sample

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) are, arguably, the most important single reason for organizations to deploy a messaging archiving capability. The FRCP are a body of rules focused on governing court procedures for managing civil suits in the United States district courts. While the United States Supreme Court is responsible for promulgating the FRCP, the United States Congress must approve these rules and any changes made to them.

A number of important and substantive revisions to the FRCP went into effect on December 1, 2006. These changes represented several years of debate at various levels and will have a significant impact on electronic discovery and the management of electronic data within organizations that operate in the United States. In a nutshell, the changes to the FRCP require organizations to manage their data in such a way that this data can be produced in a timely and complete manner when necessary, such as during legal discovery proceedings. The new amendments codified Electronically Stored Information (ESI), effectively making electronic data more important in the context of legal discovery and litigation in general.

Email contains a growing proportion of business records that must be preserved for long periods. Further, email is increasingly requested during discovery proceedings because of the FRCP and related issues. As a result, it is critical that email be made available for legal discovery purposes.