eDiscovery amendments in Federal Civil Rules of Procedure come into force 1st of December

Requirement to submit electronic documents as evidence in civil cases creates urgent need for advanced knowledge and litigation management systems

FileControl's pioneering Knowledge and Litigation Management Solutions can help companies comply with new requirements in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), the company announced today. These changes, which came into effect on 1 December, specify requirements for handling a wide range of electronic documents as evidence in civil cases during the discovery process. This requires virtually every type of organization to follow new procedures for storage and production of electronic files – including drafts, emails, and even instant messaging records – to make relevant data quickly and easily available during the discovery process. FileControl Partners Ltd, a leader in web-based knowledge and litigation management technology, offers a complete solution for document and information management and storage that help companies attain high efficiency at low cost.

"A single employee uses an average of 1-5 gigabytes in email alone. FileControl's solution is geared to deal with such immense quantities of data at high speed, streamlining the electronic discovery process," said Ahmad Mian, President and CEO of FileControl Partners.

FileControl's highly secure Knowledge and Litigation Management Solution, used by Fortune 500 companies, enables legal documents – both paper-based and electronically stored information – to be quickly and economically stored, reviewed, searched and annotated by large, geographically dispersed teams. Its powerful searching and tagging capability helps ensure that requests for electronic data can be fulfilled. FileControl's solutions can search through immense quantities of data, and its native file review supports nearly 400 file formats, allowing users to review document files without needing additional software.

Today, 99% of documents relevant to legal matters are created electronically. According to the new regulations, companies are expected to respond to data requests in a reasonable amount of time, and non-compliance can result in stiff fines. In 2005, well before the new requirements came into effect, a company was fined $1.5 billion in a widely publicized case, for failing to search diligently for the existence of large amounts of email backup, demonstrating the importance of rigorous, systematic data storage and discovery. In the coming year, 75% of global companies are predicted to expect litigation requiring electronic discovery, yet a third of IT personnel surveyed in November felt that their companies could not meet the new requirements.

"With these dramatic changes in FRCP to accommodate new forms of data production and storage, organizations and law firms face substantially greater risk if they do not take immediate steps to adapt," said Ahmad Mian. "FileControl’s solutions are a highly secure, extremely powerful, yet low-cost way of fulfilling discovery requirements."

About FileControl Partners

FileControl Partners provides hosted web-based knowledge and litigation management services to organizations around the world, including Fortune 500 companies. For more information, call +1 (713) 355-1111, or visit www.filecontrol.com.

For more information on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, visit http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/.