The Lawyers Weekly - February 3, 2012

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
February 3, 2012 | 25

BUSINESS
CAREERS

Owner
Continued From Page 24

employees, and all parties understand that the owner of the devices also owns the data on them.

However, some companies subsidize employees who purchase devices, understanding they’ll be used for both business and personal reasons. The mixture of personal and business records on these devices makes for a tangled ownership web.

“If the owner of a smartphone takes photos of his girlfriend, who owns those pictures?” Lo asks. He adds that the answer isn’t clear in every case.

But companies can take steps to minimize their exposure to liability.
Security and file management policies can now include:
Advise clients to regularly purge records according to their records

retention policy. Such systems can be set to overwrite sections of storage media that previously contained information. (While tech wizards have ways of retrieving purged data, their services can be expensive. Generally, courts accept that documents are gone if deleted according to a documented, legitimate data-handling policy.)

“You can minimize the cost of discovery if you adhere to your deletion schedule,” says Susan Nickle, co-founder of Wortzman Nickle Professional Corp.

Software such as Adobe Audition can create a “noise print” and remove a segment of sound from an audio recording. “It’s like having a conversation with street noise, and closing the door to shut out the street noise,” explains Colin Smith, senior solutions architect for Adobe Systems Inc. He adds that the effect is easy to undo, so it’s non-destructive.