Extract from Maribel Rivera’s article “Strategic eDiscovery Readiness: Turning Investigations into Competitive Advantage”
When a whistleblower sounds the alarm or an agency issues a demand letter, the firm that can surface critical documents in hours—not weeks—protects its client’s reputation and spares in-house teams the budget pain of stopgap eDiscovery.
Norton Rose Fulbright’s Annual Litigation Trends Survey from 2025 highlights the critical need for this urgent response. Nearly half of corporate counsel expect an uptick in lawsuits (48 percent) and regulatory inquiries (46 percent) over the next twelve months.
The events of August 2024 also highlight the stakes. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission levied a $392 million penalty against 26 financial institutions for failing to retain Slack and WhatsApp messages. A week later, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rebuked Google for the “systematic destruction” of internal chats, warning that future litigants “may not be so lucky” in avoiding sanctions. Companies now view collaboration tools as essential for maintaining corporate integrity, and they apply this standard to evaluate outside counsel as well.
