Determining reasonable discovery: How long is too long?

A few years ago I did a short stint in the US offices of a Japanese company.  I worked with a woman that had been with the company for nearly 15 years, and she never threw anything out.  Drove me insane.  I can't stand clutter, and so I tend to throw away anything that doesn't have an immediate use.  She was certainly my alter-ego, never throwing anything out, even communication from when she first started with the company.

Turns out, she was right and I was wrong.  Newly released e-discovery rules leave a lot of questions unanswered about how long a company is responsible for keeping electronic communications.  The length of time that a company is responsible for providing such communications is left to be determined at the time that a civil suit is filed.  Hmmm...

Does that mean that a litigator can decide you need eveery piece of electronic communications that have ever passed through you company on X and X topics?  I'm not sure I understand it fully, but that's the way I read it.  And if I am reading it right, that could be a complete nightmare.  The amount of storage needed to keep up with all of those communications will be astounding.

E-mail is like breathing these days; everyone is doing it.  And when you pile all of the other potential types of digital communications and documents into the mix, a lot of information never makes it to hard copy.  Now, try to store all of that stuff, and within a few years you'll need multiple data centers dedicated to nothing but archiving. 

That's extreme, I know.  A company isn't required to keep every little digitial piece of information, but the concept remains the same if only 80% of that digitial information is stored.  It's astounding.

To help combat these requirements, a lot of companies will go to very strict communication rules.  Any kind of personal communication will be completely killed (not that it should be taking place at work anyway).  But in addition to that, some organization may opt not to use communications--like instant messaging--that would make them more effective.

It's a tough situation to figure out.  We have to find a way to protect ourselves and to save what's important.  But it's the process of figuring out how long something should be saved and just what exactly something is that's unclear.  Until those two pieces are firmly established, regulations like this will continue to happen, and I think they'll only serve to muddy the waters even more.