Last September, the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Supreme Court's Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure recommended changes that force companies involved in a civil lawsuit to sit down and hammer out what records are fair game for electronic discovery.

In general, the resulting 300-plus page document describing the new e-discovery criteria says that companies involved in civil litigation must meet within the first 30 days of a case's filing to discuss how to handle electronic data. The discussion must encompass retention practices, the types of records required and their electronic format, as well as what is considered "accessible" data, said John Bace, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

Failure to comply with the new rules could be costly.

Morgan Stanley was fined US$1.5 billion -- half of which was punitive -- in May 2005 when a judge ruled that it had failed to preserve information. Hearings for an appeal in that matter are scheduled for June 28.

It was partly for legal discovery reasons that EMC National Life Co., in Des Moines started using an e-mail archiving service from Fortiva Inc. "The ability to do legal discovery with their searching capabilities sold us on their product," said Marc Comstock, assistant vice president and technical services manager at EMC National Life. "It's incredibly fast."