An IT executive turned California e-Discovery Attorney and Consultant shares his personal insights and experience - with an emphasis on facilitating the relationship between legal and technology professionals.
And no, I'm not finished with my sections of the Calbar book, yet...
I see all of the year-end predictions and top-ten lists out there, but I'm closing out 2011 with this video from The Onion News Network. I'm laughing, but not too much...
Pop: (verb - transitive): slang. To Arrest, e.g. "Johnny got popped selling heroin."
Courtesy of MSNBC.com, this video illustrates beautifully (if you can call it that in this context) how easily one may hack into your router - and the amount of trouble you may get into as a result. This is what cyber-crime really looks like. Do you want to bank on a competent law-enforcement technician believing your explanation, then doing the legwork necessary to establish that you're not a child-pornographer?
Remember when I said I was going to start posting videos on this blog? Yeah, me either...it was that long ago that I said it, but obviously haven't done it. Well, I'm going to do it, but in the meantime, I've been sitting on "v-Discovery Insights", which I was diligently saving for the occasion. I've decided it would be good to use with all of my posted videos - whether they're mine or not - so that you can select them as a category. So, there you go. From now on, all videos posted here will have that tag.
Now comes the hard part - deciding whether I want to go back through 325 posts and tag the prior ones!
For those who follow my tweets, I was sitting in the Executive Counsel conference Tuesday, listening to various speakers describe how their teams respond to a litigation hold and it reminded me of a film from 1971 called The Andromeda Strain. Check out this promo and tell me that this doesn't look familiar!
Any guesses as to which guy is Steve Jobs and which guy is the customer? Hint: Steve Jobs always wears black.
If you read Part I of this series, in closing, I asked whether the "bumper" solution was a good decision from a management standpoint. My opinion? Yes, but only if you look at it from a purely financial perspective. From a customer service/relations standpoint, it's a disaster.
Let's review the progression of events, from initial customer complaints to Apple's eventual response:
Denial - "There is no problem."
Blame the Customer - "You're holding it wrong!"
It's all in your Head - "Our s/w is erroneously telling you that you have a problem."
Blame your Competitors - "Everyone else has the same problem."
Denial II - "There is no problem, but we'll give you a free bumper."
What's the 1st thing that comes to mind? This isn't indigenous to Apple. I've heard this song before. Where do think the joke, "That isn't a bug, it's a feature." comes from? I just think that with Apple's dedicated user culture, they have a better chance than most to pull it off; but that doesn't make it right.
I've spoken to career Apple customers who are so incensed by what they term the arrogant attitude of the company (usually referring to Jobs, specifically) that they've finally had enough. Apple can afford to lose them, but that's not really the point, is it?
So where's the eDiscovery tie-in? Where do I start? You might be in a corporate IT department. You might be inside counsel. You might be outside counsel. You might be me - a consultant, positioned somewhere in-between all of them. What are you going to do when management adopts the attitude:
Denial - "We don't need to implement this."
Blame the 'Customer' - "The client doesn't want it."
It's all in your Head - "We don't need to comply with the rules."
Blame your competitors - "Nobody else is implementing it."
Denial II - "We'll take our chances. If litigation arises, we'll look at it then."
The difference between Apple and you? They have a public relations issue and face class-action lawsuits. You - and/or your management are likely to face serious sanctions. But don't worry; that's only if something goes wrong...
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