The opposite tack, deleting most messages, is also risky. This used to be a popular accounting and legal strategy (the idea was that they can't use evidence that doesn't exist). But as the government frowns on that concept now, large accounting and legal firms are aggressively pursuing email retention strategies and software tools to keep their clients (and themselves) off regulatory hit lists. Taufer commented, "These large law firms want to address the issue from both a storage and a policy and methodology standpoint: how do you do it, what do you do, and how do you cover yourself from a legal standpoint?"
In one lawsuit an IT professional divulged that he was storing hundreds of backup tapes in a closet. He had not told his lawyers. Regardless of whether the backups had anything to do with the lawsuit, the opposing lawyers had the right to order that the backups be read. Of course they did that, and the cost ran into the millions of dollars for the company. In another case, Prudential Life Insurance was involved in a class action suit and the court had ordered that it destroy no records during the proceedings. Unfortunately no one told the IT department, who happily went on deleting electronic records on its own retention schedule. A judge issued a $1 million penalty against Prudential for destroying data that supported its opponent's case, and required them to deploy a records management program with a multimillion dollar price tag. Although Prudential had not deliberately destroyed relevant data, it still lost huge sums of money over its inability to enforce a reasonable and consistent retention policy.
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