Twas The Night Before Trial

Twas the night before trial and all through the office.
Not a lawyer was stirring, not even the novice
The papers were filed, all straight in their folders,
The ones they had burned were down to a smolder

Paralegals and analysts passed out in their cubes
Their drawings and flipcharts all rolled up in tubes
The admins went home and I slumped in my chair
Knowing soon that the auditors would be out of my hair

When down in the lobby there arose such a clatter
The guard dropped his doughnut and coffee did splatter
I closed all my windows pulled out my thumb flash
I ran to the raised floor to see what server had crashed

The blue lights were flashing and sirens galore
And agents were gathering down on the first floor
Eight men in flack jackets with accounting degrees
A shiny new search warrant for more discov’ry

They said I must find every email and letter
All the messages, voicemails and intranet chatter
All the thoughts and opinions, the research and warnings
And I had to present it for trial in the morning

I thought of that vendor I threw out on the lawn
That tried to sell me an eDiscovery farm
Of servers and software this problem to solve
Of finding the content this case would involve

Then there was the email archiving solution
Without which we now will face prosecution
We thought we had content management too
Turns out though with SharePoint that’s really not true

I’ll call that sales guy with my one call from jail
Surely his Amex will cover my bail
And the fines we’ll avoid from that part of the judgement
Once we sign an enterprise license agreement

So box it all, scan it all, then to the shredder
Records managment will be what makes it all better
Because when you follow retention rules right
You take care of your content and you sleep well at night