August 1, 2008

Industry Blurb: Smart Move by Symantec

by Cary J. Calderone, Esquire

Symantec has made a very interesting move in creating a new Discovery Counsel position to work with the Enterprise Vault team. Annie Goranson, an attorney from their legal department, has been promoted to this position. She will work with the Systems Engineers and Enterprise Vault clients to help with system design and implementation. This is a bold strategic move in an effort to address....
the legal issues around email archiving that typical Systems Engineers and consultants can not or may not handle. Her real-world e-discovery experience should help Symantec keep their people operating within the rules that prohibit non-lawyers from practicing law while providing clearer advice to the customers who want to use E-Vault to be better prepared. I would not be surprised to see other companies in the electronic information management space follow suit and utilize more knowledgeable legal personnel to avoid potential problems in this area. While we lawyers do deserve some of the criticism directed at us, sidestepping legal traps and distinguishing critical legal facts and issues is not usually handled best by sales people and systems engineers without extensive legal backgrounds. Score one for the lawyers!

1 comment:

Sean Regan said...

I am excited that we were able to make this addition. Existing customers have so much experience to share and prospects are interested in practical solutions that have been deployed successfully. As Discovery Counsel Annie will be able to help bridge the gap between IT and Legal for our prospects while sharing the best practices she has observed at close to 9,000 Symantec Enterprise Vault archiving customers.

Sean Regan
sean_regan@symantec.com
E-Discovery Product Marketing Manager