March 9, 2026

Navigating Cross-Border ESI Transfers in an Evolving Regulatory Landscape

Miguel Villalobos Integreon + Follow Contact LinkedIn Facebook X Send Embed During Legalweek, amid conversations about broad industry trends, attendees seek actionable strategies for the high-stakes demands that shape their daily work. One of the most persistent issues many companies struggle with is the management of electronically stored information (ESI) and cross-border transfers for litigation.

Following the initial scramble when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect in 2018, the urgent concerns have faded. However, the operational reality of moving data across jurisdictions has only become more fraught, and it can be a particularly heavy burden for some in-house legal departments.

On Wednesday, March 11, I will join a panel of practitioners offering practical insights in our Legalweek session, “Litigation in the Age of AI – Cross‑Border ESI Transfers: Minimizing Friction and Compliance Risk.” The takeaways can inform technical workflows and defensible methodologies that help simplify these complex challenges.

Global Operational Perspectives

This session will examine how data privacy laws and compliance obligations may collide with discovery obligations during real-time litigation. In addition to Integreon’s experience helping litigation clients identify technology solutions that streamline processes and reduce costs, these panel speakers will provide a 360-degree view of common pain points in cross-border ESI transfers:

• Matthew Gasaway (Associate General Counsel, eDiscovery & Information Governance, Meta) offers the perspective of a global enterprise navigating constant regulatory scrutiny.
• Denise Backhouse (Shareholder, eDiscovery Counsel, Littler Mendelson P.C.) provides the UK/EU legal lens on data protection.
• David Cohen (CEO, Access to Justice, and former Big Law partner) brings decades of experience in structuring defensible Big Law workflows.

Bridging the Gap Between Courts and Regulators

Many companies face challenges in weighing two competing sets of demands: those from privacy regulators and from the U.S. judiciary. The expectations for modern discovery do not align with many compliance requirements for managing ESI transfers. This situation can create obstacles for companies, especially those that have light litigation portfolios or have not dealt with it in a new jurisdiction.

During our discussion, we will review common tactical approaches for this dynamic, including:

• Defensible workflows: Strategies to determine which data sets are safe to move across borders.
• Restricted data options: How to satisfy discovery obligations when data can’t move between jurisdictions.
• Documentation best practices: Which artifacts are most important to track and update during litigation.

New Complexities: AI and the Cloud

Beyond traditional jurisdictional hurdles, technological shifts have introduced new layers of risk. We will analyze why cross-border ESI remains such a pressing issue despite the relatively mature regulatory environment. Two complicating factors raise frequent issues.

First, the increased use of cloud servers and the shift to third-party environments mean companies lack the control they would have when managing internal servers. Most enterprise data now resides in hyperscale cloud environments, like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Instead of physically isolating data, companies need a sophisticated understanding of how cloud settings are configured so they can properly satisfy regional residency requirements.

Second, the growing adoption of AI tools has increasingly automated the movement of data in ways that may bypass traditional reviews. Organizations that deploy AI agents across a global data ecosystem may inadvertently create transfer risks that existing policy documents have not accounted for, raising the potential for subsequent issues.

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