When Good Faith is Not Good Enough

Deborah Baron, Vice President of Legal and Compliance, Autonomy, United Kingdom

As the global economic crisis makes its mark, regulators and courts are sounding off with one message coming through loud and clear, ‘flout the rules, pay the penalties’. In-house counsel, compliance officers and their outside lawyers are responding, forging a new culture of accountability and transparency and changing information governance and eDisclosure policies and practices for good. In July 2009 the Financial Services Authority (FSA) published plans to create a consistent and more transparent framework for calculating financial penalties which could mean some fines treble in size. Margaret Cole, director of enforcement at the FSA, stated the following, "By hitting companies and individuals in the pocket where it hurts, the fines will be a stark warning to others on what they can expect to pay for flouting our rules.” Over 40 new regulations have come into effect in the last year, for example COBS 11.8 in the UK (requires financial services firms to retain client-related telephone conversations). Parties to disputes are experiencing costly consequences and unsolicited media attention for failing to comply with the law, the rules of civil procedure governing disclosure, as well as data privacy and protection statues.

Deborah Baron is Vice President of Legal and Compliance at Autonomy, Inc., where she is responsible for electronic discovery services across the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) and oversees company contributions to industry standards and thought leadership. Ms. Baron represents Autonomy in The Sedona Conference® WG1 and WG6 and is an Advisory Board member of the EDRM and IQPC Legal Education. She authors articles, moderates panels and teaches MCLEs on Best Practices in eDiscovery and Information Risk Management. Ms. Baron holds an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.A in Economics from Occidental College.

Autonomy has experienced a meteoric rise since its foundation in 1996 utilizing a unique combination of technologies borne out of research at Cambridge University. The company currently has a market cap of $6 billion, is the second largest pure software company in Europe and has offices worldwide. Autonomy's position as the market leader is widely recognized by leading industry analysts including Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC and Delphi, with the latter referring to Autonomy as the fastest growing public company in the space.