Challenges in DOD Legal Compliance

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) must navigate ongoing litigation, congressional inquiries, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and a wide range of often complex legal obligations. The DOD can’t change course on a dime, especially as legal and regulatory conditions fluctuate rapidly and drastically.

Traditional processes add to this difficulty, creating further obstacles to effective compliance. These practices remain a core barrier, and they also lay the groundwork for the broader challenges that follow. 

Traditional Processes Make Compliance Nearly Impossible 

Many DOD agencies struggle to maintain compliance with their legal processes because of outdated technology, disjointed workflows, manual processes, and entrenched institutional challenges. Until these agencies modernize their approach to legal compliance, they will continue to waste excessive resources with little progress.  

Some of the DOD’s most critical legal offices operate with little-to-no modern legal technology, relying on hard-copy documents or basic tools like Adobe and Microsoft Office, which aren’t designed to handle large-scale data reviews. As a result, legal teams are often forced to conduct discovery without a true eDiscovery platform, depending on manual workflows that slow response times and increase the risk of errors, missed deadlines, and compliance failures that can damage credibility. 

3 Key Challenges Slowing DOD Legal Compliance 

The traditional processes create a ripple effect across the DOD. Yet, three challenges continue to slow compliance efforts: 

1. Workforce Turnover: Employees with 20 to 30 years of experience are retiring in large numbers, taking institutional knowledge with them. This leaves newcomers to navigate inefficient, paper-based systems. 

2. Outdated Technology: Newer employees expect modern tools to manage data types ranging from emails and text messages to video footage. Instead, data requests often return excessive volumes, overwhelming legal and review teams from the start. 

3. Budget Constraints: Despite mandates to modernize, many agencies lack the budget to follow through. Backlogs prevent them from modernizing, but modernization is needed to reduce those backlogs. Meanwhile, budgets are drained by unpredictable costs such as monthly fees for storing and using data in third-party cloud environments..

Together, these challenges highlight why modernization is essential. To move forward, DOD agencies need a more efficient and secure way to manage the full legal lifecycle. 

How the DOD Can Overcome Mass Complexity 

To address disjointed and manual processes, agencies can turn to Casepoint’s secure, AI-powered platform. From data ingestion and processing to document review, production, and archiving, Casepoint streamlines compliance by reducing procedural and collaboration challenges that are otherwise time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Casepoint delivers modern capabilities for:  

• Efficient Legal Compliance: IT, cybersecurity, and legal teams can collaborate within a single, unified platform. This integrated workflow drives efficiency, with the ability to process large datasets and reduce them to a manageable review size. The result is a more efficient eDiscovery process that eases the burden on legal teams, including those working to meet DOGE requirements. 

• Security Across a Global Footprint: DOD legal matters often involve stakeholders across various locations, from domestic to international installations worldwide. By providing robust, multi-layered security, Casepoint enables collaboration from anywhere while reducing the need for travel and ensuring continuity of operations. This capability is vital for large organizations such as the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps, which chose Casepoint to protect highly sensitive government data.  

• Budgetary Predictability and Future-Readiness: Cost predictability is paramount for DOD agencies. Casepoint addresses this need with fixed, flat-rate pricing for data archiving, in contrast to the fluctuating costs of many cloud storage providers. By adopting a modern, future-ready platform, the DOD can meet today’s complex legal obligations and prepare for emerging data sources. 

Overcome Compliance Challenges With a Modern Approach 

Discover how Casepoint can help your DOD agency meet its legal obligations more efficiently.