In my role as an IT manager or project manager, I will never say to my team ‘we must get along with so and so to build this system’ or ‘we should try to talk to each other’. Who relishes to be ‘told’ or talk to on what to do? Definitely not want that directed at/to me and so why do it to my fellow workmates/colleague? It’s simply counterproductive and easily generate towards an ‘I told you so’ culture which ultimately leads to ‘a blaming culture’. In a blaming culture, creating a meaningful or ‘good stuff’ outcomes gets circuited.

I have recently come across several articles/postings highlighting that ‘IT folks and lawyers are still not talking or failure to co-operate’ in ediscovery activities. This is the posting which got me to blog. BTW, a catchy title ‘Legal and IT Are Still Not Communicating’. The posting ended by stating that ‘Only dialog between legal and IT will change that’. (i.e. the respective responsibilities of legal and IT still are not being carried out by many because they don’t understand them). Understanding starts somewhere and dialog is great if both parties are willing to have a dialog. Even building bridges between IT folks and lawyers have surfaced elsewhere.

Let it be known that it is not that IT folks are not talking to lawyers; it is most likely that ‘the talk’ is directed from lawyers to IT folks. (I am assuming in most organizations, lawyers initiate or announce the litigation hold and other ediscovery requests to the IT department). IT folks are used to receiving requests from other departments (including lawyers). However what is unusual in ediscovery is that most IT folks (unless they are trained on ediscovery terms and have exposure to ediscovery activities or have been fully briefly beforehand by legal staff) will treat the request as an IT request rather than an ediscovery requests. It’s not that ‘we are not talking’, it’s more like ‘what are we talking about?’ and ‘how do we start to get to the ‘same starting page?’. Now, how to get both parties to turn ‘talking’ into meaningful dialogue?

Failure starts when both wants to start building bridges to bridge with each other and failed to recognize that the simplest bridge is defining a raft to get to a bridge. There is always a bridge somewhere already waiting for us, just finding a raft is the first hurdle.

Remember the story of building a bridge? Let’s start by learning to define a raft and not focus on building bridges as there’re already bridges (i.e. ediscovery models, tools/systems) waiting to be used.

Finding willing raft designers from both parties is probably the first hurdle

Many worlds colliding in facebook judging by the number of groups. Oh imagine if (or when) facebook gets meshed up with Google. Just before these two worlds collide, I’ll leave the facebook warning message to me here for future proofing:

Please Read This!
Warning! Your account could be disabled.

Your behaviour indicates that you may be in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page.

How cool !

Want to know the heart of the issue in ediscovery? It’s not about the ediscovery rules/laws or about judges. To hear one world view, see the interview conducted by IT Business Edge. Like in facebook, people enjoy creating different world views and the real fun starts when two worlds collide like me and the facebook creator/owner.

I dread to imagine my world when Google and facebook becomes ONE.

In the world of IT and wearing my project manager hat on, ediscovery/edisclosure is another ‘activity’ to add to the list of items to consider. In the past (before ediscovery/edisclosure is coined) and in projects I have been involved in, I will do ‘cultural sensitivity’ sensing and ‘who is who’ and ‘who knows what or their role etc’ (the word coined is stakeholder analysis). I have held workshops (e.g. internet banking projects) whereby lawyers were invited as ‘key stakeholders’ and IT people were doing ‘who knows what’. Guess what were the outcomes? Lawyers may know a lot but they generally don’t want to reveal or share ‘openly’ in a workshop. If they do reveal or share, there will be more meetings with several paper memo type exchanges.

What can be done to improve collaboration between lawyers and IT people?  Before attempting collaboration, both teams need to sense ‘who is who’ (not only the IT people) and whether they can deal with whatever the outcomes and learn to accept whatever the consequences.  (fear of being open?) I don’t know any rule books or processes to do this. It’s beyond reckoning… Like some people just can’t ride a bike no matter how many books they have read or seen. This is just my sudden reckoning!

I like the word, protodigital. I would like it better if this word can be a mantra for lawyers and IT folks to get to know ‘who is who’ to reach to ‘who knows what’.