Centralizing Stores of Information to Make Retention Policies Possible

Most law firms understand the need to plan for the implementation of records retention policies, but there has been little agreement on how to achieve this goal. Firms are acutely aware of the rising costs associated with storing physical data and the burden surrounding backup, maintenance and migration of electronic content. When faced with the need to produce information, be it at a client request or when compelled by a court, the more control a firm has over its data, the more efficient and cost effective this process will be.

Firms have had to contend with the question of whether information governance will be achieved through centralization of data or the centralization of the governance process. Data centralization has been the preferred solution in many cases for a variety of reasons. IT departments realized long ago the benefits that come from centralized data storage and maintenance. This trend has only increased as server virtualization has become so common. Security and backup goals are easier to meet when data is stored centrally. Data replication has also become more common as a disaster recovery safeguard, and this is easiest to administer from centralized data stores.

Breaking the e-Mail Habit

Law firms must continually consider the needs of working attorneys, however. Centralization of data has taken another form to meet these needs as lawyers and support staff seek to reference client data in aggregated form. Being asked to search separately through document management systems, records management systems and litigation support libraries often stored on network servers is becoming less and less attractive. Newer versions of common law firm applications and the prevalence of Microsoft SharePoint portals and similar tools are all making available better options for accessing and saving information in the application interfaces that attorneys work in most often.

Even with all of this new technology available, many attorneys still rely on the firm's e-mail application as the repository in which they most often work. e-Mail has also been the domain where costs and performance issues can be the hardest for IT departments to contend with. The e-mail Inbox is growing rapidly for most users. e-Mail cannot be treated as a repository separate from the rest of the managed content related to client matters.

e-Mail can present similar challenges to an organization as local hard drives and network drives. How does an IT department capture and control this unstructured content so it can protect and manage this information in line with firm policies? The answer has unfortunately always been to place restrictions on the end user. Eliminating local save rights and locking down network storage locations forces the user to adapt his or her behavior and work within the applications made available to store client-related data.

These decisions forced firms to confront a host of smaller problems related to how attorneys and support staff work every day. How does a document scanned by support staff join the official matter file? Where should documents be saved before a matter number is available? A number of the solutions to these problems resulted in an even greater burden on the e-mail system. Instead of pushing scanned documents from a networked copy machine to a folder on a shared drive where it might languish forever, the document could be e-mailed to the user. When attorneys found there was not a relevant client and/or matter number in the firm document management system, many turned to storing documents in e-mail attachments circulated internally.

Controlling Information

Visionary firms looked to the underlying process problems behind all of this distributed content. If content creation is not a guided process, firms are left to manage a proliferation of information in varying repositories. Process decisions that look to improve capturing and controlling user-created content invariably improve overall business processes. The creation of attorney or practice-based matter numbers in the firm document management system (“DMS”) gives a location other than the hard drive to store documents related to a matter that has yet to be formally generated in the firm's financial system and subsequent applications. Speeding the new business intake process improves the speed with which the actual new matter number is available for classifying content. Distributed scanning capabilities available to firm staff that integrate with document and records management systems allow documents to be scanned directly to the location where they should be managed for their entire life cycle.

Content created outside of the firm has been more difficult to control. Larger and larger volumes arrive via e-mail each year, and this media has taken over all other forms of communication. Limiting e-mail accounts is less prevalent than limiting offline saving locations, but many firms have implemented these restrictions with little impact to working attorneys. Whether the restriction is time-based or size-based, users are being asked to consider the value of a piece of communication and move it to a more secure repository if they judge that it has value to the organization. Vendors are developing more sophisticated software to help users in these decisions about where to declare documents as records. Taking into consideration the filed location of previous messages from the same senders or recipients and reading keywords in the message can both be great methods for helping software to infer a destination within a formal document or records repository.

Law firms have been reluctant to travel the route more common to regulated industries, where all e-mail traffic may be captured as a record. Law firm management and IT staff negotiate the line between risk to the organization and the complications of categorizing all data. e-Mail servers are of course backed up for recovery purposes, and many firms have experienced the high costs of searching this data for information relevant to pending or threatened litigation. While attempting to categorize this data and move it into firm-approved records repositories automatically seems an attractive option, the reality is that this might damage firm productivity in other ways.

Contrary to the over-cautious nature of many amateur records managers, as many lawyers have been forced to become, not all data is worth saving. Software that attempts to capture all e-mail traffic will surely capture too much information. Initiatives like knowledge management and risk management are compromised when software makes decisions about what should be saved without user intervention and acceptance. By training users to make filing decisions and offering software tools that make this process fast and intuitive, firms can ensure that relevant data and quality reusable work product is maintained and does not need to be sifted out of a mountain of out-of-office replies and daily firm announcements.

In addition to software tools that bring a degree of automation to the process of declaring records, records management best practices long applied to the paper file can help achieve user compliance, aid in the discovery and production process, and contribute to attorney efficiency. A standard classification scheme applied to the storage of electronic content within a matter file brings a variety of benefits for controlling your firm's data. If standardized categories are established, whether through standard document naming conventions, document types, or matter-centric folders, classification of a record under one of these categories offers immediate meta-data that can be useful in managing the records for the duration of their existence.

A folder may be established for your vital firm records related to the engagement of the particular client if your retention policy states a need to maintain client engagement letters and similar documentation indefinitely. Software-based retention rules can ensure that these types of folders are not made candidates for final disposition or destruction reporting to attorneys. Many firms have chosen to segregate client-provided content as a reminder that this material must be returned to the client at the conclusion of the matter.

Educating attorneys and support staff about the firm-approved repositories for storing client and firm information is a necessary step in gaining compliance. Retention decisions are always best made in light of the specific circumstances of the client and matter engagement. If a complete file cannot be identified, attorneys will be reluctant to make decisions about final disposition. The strategies described above work to centralize data and classify it at the point of creation, before new business makes it less attractive to revisit physical and electronic records storage decisions. Limitations on users will only be acceptable once intuitive and efficient processes and software have been implemented to support record-keeping decisions.

Most law firms understand the need to plan for the implementation of records retention policies, but there has been little agreement on how to achieve this goal. Firms are acutely aware of the rising costs associated with storing physical data and the burden surrounding backup, maintenance and migration of electronic content. When faced with the need to produce information, be it at a client request or when compelled by a court, the more control a firm has over its data, the more efficient and cost effective this process will be.

Firms have had to contend with the question of whether information governance will be achieved through centralization of data or the centralization of the governance process. Data centralization has been the preferred solution in many cases for a variety of reasons. IT departments realized long ago the benefits that come from centralized data storage and maintenance. This trend has only increased as server virtualization has become so common. Security and backup goals are easier to meet when data is stored centrally. Data replication has also become more common as a disaster recovery safeguard, and this is easiest to administer from centralized data stores.

Breaking the e-Mail Habit

Law firms must continually consider the needs of working attorneys, however. Centralization of data has taken another form to meet these needs as lawyers and support staff seek to reference client data in aggregated form. Being asked to search separately through document management systems, records management systems and litigation support libraries often stored on network servers is becoming less and less attractive. Newer versions of common law firm applications and the prevalence of Microsoft SharePoint portals and similar tools are all making available better options for accessing and saving information in the application interfaces that attorneys work in most often.

Even with all of this new technology available, many attorneys still rely on the firm's e-mail application as the repository in which they most often work. e-Mail has also been the domain where costs and performance issues can be the hardest for IT departments to contend with. The e-mail Inbox is growing rapidly for most users. e-Mail cannot be treated as a repository separate from the rest of the managed content related to client matters.

e-Mail can present similar challenges to an organization as local hard drives and network drives. How does an IT department capture and control this unstructured content so it can protect and manage this information in line with firm policies? The answer has unfortunately always been to place restrictions on the end user. Eliminating local save rights and locking down network storage locations forces the user to adapt his or her behavior and work within the applications made available to store client-related data.

These decisions forced firms to confront a host of smaller problems related to how attorneys and support staff work every day. How does a document scanned by support staff join the official matter file? Where should documents be saved before a matter number is available? A number of the solutions to these problems resulted in an even greater burden on the e-mail system. Instead of pushing scanned documents from a networked copy machine to a folder on a shared drive where it might languish forever, the document could be e-mailed to the user. When attorneys found there was not a relevant client and/or matter number in the firm document management system, many turned to storing documents in e-mail attachments circulated internally.

Controlling Information

Visionary firms looked to the underlying process problems behind all of this distributed content. If content creation is not a guided process, firms are left to manage a proliferation of information in varying repositories. Process decisions that look to improve capturing and controlling user-created content invariably improve overall business processes. The creation of attorney or practice-based matter numbers in the firm document management system (“DMS”) gives a location other than the hard drive to store documents related to a matter that has yet to be formally generated in the firm's financial system and subsequent applications. Speeding the new business intake process improves the speed with which the actual new matter number is available for classifying content. Distributed scanning capabilities available to firm staff that integrate with document and records management systems allow documents to be scanned directly to the location where they should be managed for their entire life cycle.

Content created outside of the firm has been more difficult to control. Larger and larger volumes arrive via e-mail each year, and this media has taken over all other forms of communication. Limiting e-mail accounts is less prevalent than limiting offline saving locations, but many firms have implemented these restrictions with little impact to working attorneys. Whether the restriction is time-based or size-based, users are being asked to consider the value of a piece of communication and move it to a more secure repository if they judge that it has value to the organization. Vendors are developing more sophisticated software to help users in these decisions about where to declare documents as records. Taking into consideration the filed location of previous messages from the same senders or recipients and reading keywords in the message can both be great methods for helping software to infer a destination within a formal document or records repository.

Law firms have been reluctant to travel the route more common to regulated industries, where all e-mail traffic may be captured as a record. Law firm management and IT staff negotiate the line between risk to the organization and the complications of categorizing all data. e-Mail servers are of course backed up for recovery purposes, and many firms have experienced the high costs of searching this data for information relevant to pending or threatened litigation. While attempting to categorize this data and move it into firm-approved records repositories automatically seems an attractive option, the reality is that this might damage firm productivity in other ways.

Contrary to the over-cautious nature of many amateur records managers, as many lawyers have been forced to become, not all data is worth saving. Software that attempts to capture all e-mail traffic will surely capture too much information. Initiatives like knowledge management and risk management are compromised when software makes decisions about what should be saved without user intervention and acceptance. By training users to make filing decisions and offering software tools that make this process fast and intuitive, firms can ensure that relevant data and quality reusable work product is maintained and does not need to be sifted out of a mountain of out-of-office replies and daily firm announcements.

In addition to software tools that bring a degree of automation to the process of declaring records, records management best practices long applied to the paper file can help achieve user compliance, aid in the discovery and production process, and contribute to attorney efficiency. A standard classification scheme applied to the storage of electronic content within a matter file brings a variety of benefits for controlling your firm's data. If standardized categories are established, whether through standard document naming conventions, document types, or matter-centric folders, classification of a record under one of these categories offers immediate meta-data that can be useful in managing the records for the duration of their existence.

A folder may be established for your vital firm records related to the engagement of the particular client if your retention policy states a need to maintain client engagement letters and similar documentation indefinitely. Software-based retention rules can ensure that these types of folders are not made candidates for final disposition or destruction reporting to attorneys. Many firms have chosen to segregate client-provided content as a reminder that this material must be returned to the client at the conclusion of the matter.

Educating attorneys and support staff about the firm-approved repositories for storing client and firm information is a necessary step in gaining compliance. Retention decisions are always best made in light of the specific circumstances of the client and matter engagement. If a complete file cannot be identified, attorneys will be reluctant to make decisions about final disposition. The strategies described above work to centralize data and classify it at the point of creation, before new business makes it less attractive to revisit physical and electronic records storage decisions. Limitations on users will only be acceptable once intuitive and efficient processes and software have been implemented to support record-keeping decisions.