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Lawsuits against businesses are increasingly common, with companies facing rising scrutiny from consumers, regulators, and government agencies. Companies are at risk for charges of discrimination, harassment, wage violations, contract breaches, and many other liabilities.
Since lawsuits can come at any time, it’s necessary to form a robust litigation readiness strategy in order to be ready for any type of legal investigation or accusation you may face. Having a plan in place can make all the difference when trying to defend your organization in court.
Through ongoing legal preparation and analysis, legal teams are able to keep tabs on their available resources and make accommodations when necessary—like hiring team members or obtaining computing support.
Team Venio
Keep reading to learn what litigation readiness is, what it entails, and what you can do to build an effective and comprehensive plan that protects your business.
What Is Litigation Readiness?
Litigation readiness is a business strategy that prepares an organization to handle legal requests like lawsuits, audits, and investigations.
It’s important to keep in mind that litigation readiness varies from company to company. As such, it’s necessary to build a strategy that matches your organization’s unique needs.
Why Do You Need a Plan?
Businesses of all sizes are at risk for litigation. And for this reason, litigation readiness is important for organizations whether large and small. The more you prepare ahead of time, the easier it is to respond efficiently to litigation inquiries.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the top reasons why companies need litigation readiness.
Respond Quickly
Companies face countless requests on a daily basis from customers, shareholders, employees, partners, and media agencies. With so much activity taking place, legal matters can often get lost in the shuffle.
Litigation readiness helps teams ensure that incoming legal matters receive the proper care and attention they deserve and move forward without delay. This also prevents work from piling up and gives companies the time they need to strategize and execute.
Reduce Risk
Litigation requests can be complex and overwhelming, especially for smaller organizations that lack the resources and experience to handle them.
By forming a comprehensive litigation readiness plan, you can train team members on how to respond to incoming requests. This reduces risk and ensures that team members respond appropriately at every step.
Identify Resource Constraints
Legal investigations and audits can place a tremendous burden on an organization. For example, they require time and attention from workers. They are also expensive and may require extra computing resources and security needs.
Through ongoing legal preparation and analysis, legal teams are able to keep tabs on their available resources and make accommodations when necessary—like hiring team members or obtaining computing support.
Reduce Costs
Legal matters can be very costly, as they involve countless hours of data extraction and analysis as well as communication and collaboration.
Planning ahead helps to avoid unnecessary errors. This, in turn, reduces rework and keeps costs low. At the same time, it also enables you to identify opportunities to cut costs and save additional money.
Improve Over Time
Another benefit of litigation readiness is it lets legal teams to step back and analyze their processes to identify opportunities for improvement.
Over time, this enables legal teams to operate with greater speed, efficiency, and accuracy—which results in getting better legal outcomes.
What Does a Litigation Readiness Plan Entail?
It helps to approach litigation readiness from a project management perspective. In other words, you’ll want to establish leadership for the initiative, identify goals, and implement project tracking and communication mechanisms to ensure optimal results.
With this in mind, here are some of the core aspects of litigation readiness.
