UK and US EDisclosure / EDiscovery and Compliance Commonality at IQPC London

There was something for everyone at the IQPC Document Retention and EDisclosure Management Summit in London this week. The Bribery Act gave added incentive for those responsible for information management within organisations; at the other end of the process, prosecutors and judges from the US and the UK emphasised that the target is not merely formal compliance with court rules but business objectives and business efficacy; in between, the technology begins to appear – at last – as a tool to support the business and procedural requirements and not, as it used to, as a free-standing objective of its own.

We have also finally eradicated the impression that US judges, providers and practitioners are missionaries come to civilise a backward race. We are all in this together, thanks to four specific facets of globalisation: the need to collect data worldwide and the privacy conflicts which that brings; the fact that the dominating new technology for creation and dissemination of data (of which Twitter and Facebook are but two examples) goes global immediately; the convergence of thinking on court-led procedural matters such as co-operation and proportionality; and now the Bribery Act, matching and exceeding the reach and the implications of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. One US visitor said that she had gone away from a previous conference wondering why she had crossed the Atlantic simply to hear other Americans speak; there are still plenty of them here, but their contribution now brings a world view, not merely a US one, to what has become a much more collegiate group of experts.

As always, I went to relatively few sessions beyond the six in which I took part because I use these events as an opportunity to talk to as many people as possible. I mention this not merely to justify my failure to report comprehensively on the whole conference but to emphasise a hidden value in these events, and an overlooked justification for time taken out of the office. Unclear about some particular technology and whether it its use is likely to be acceptable in a court? Talk to a few people who provide it and then to a judge. Not sure whether your company is ahead or behind others in compliance matters? Have a chat with people who hold parallel roles in other companies. There is much more to these events than one-way communication from the platforms.