BACKGROUND
PilotLegis is a risk-purchasing group for select, midsize law firms seeking greater control over their professional liability insurance program. The group provides cutting edge best practices in law firm risk and claims and information management to their 30 member firms. 

With the increased importance placed on client data security and cybersecurity, PilotLegis leaders approached Mattern about speaking at their annual conference on information governance (IG) within law firms. 

The panel session was well received by member firms and the Mattern consultant, Nathan Curtis, who participated received this positive feedback: 
Thank you so much for some of the best commentary (perhaps the best) on law firm information management I’ve heard.  I appreciated your pragmatism as well as your easy grasp of best practices and the audience did, too.  Great session.  

The value in making information governance a critical firm initiative propelled PilotLegis to commit to assisting its member firms. 

PilotLegis approached Mattern about developing a series of six modules that addressed various aspects of records/data management and information security within law firms. As part of membership, firms now have the ability to sign up for these modules as needed and PilotLegis provides partial reimbursement to the firm for their participation. 

CASE STUDY
One such member firm signed up for a Mattern module to help address their historical paper records. 

Like so many firms, the Firm had boxes of paper records that hadn’t been touched in years. The attorneys responsible had retired or moved on, and the boxes of records lay idle. At the outset of this engagement, Mattern and the Firm addressed the objectives for this process:
- Analyze historical records in off-site storage to assess the continued storage costs
- Outline the risks of retaining records beyond the retention period
- Provide a document destruction roadmap with technological requirements 

Mattern interviewed and obtained information from a cross section of firm employees and also the firm’s two storage providers. 

Mattern compiled their current inventory and costs, and as part of that tabulated the costs to store the 18,700 cubic feet of untouched paper records that have been held beyond the 11-year retention schedule. This amount totaled a significant $53,000 in annual storage expense.

There was an additional and unfortunate challenge. Mid-stream of moving boxes from one provider to another, one of the storage providers experienced a warehouse fire. This exposed confusion between the two storage providers pertaining to what inventory was transferred, what inventory was not found, and what inventory was destroyed in the fire. It was determined that any records inventory not transferred, and any missing inventory, was destroyed.

Reviewing the inventory list also uncovered poor record-keeping and over 2,500 boxes missing content detail entirely. 99% of the Firm’s collection would require a “flip the lid” review to be certain of each box’s contents. 

Mattern determined three scenarios and calculated the cost and time to complete. The first option was the firm having a weekly review at their office, estimated to take over 18 years with a projected cost of $234,000 to complete. The second option was for the service provider to visit the other provider’s facility and document the contents of each box in an audit room. This option was again deemed unreasonable as it would take over 19 years and cost over $200,000. The third option involved hiring temp labor devoted entirely to inventory review which resulted in a much more reasonable timeline of just 2.5 years, however the cost jumped to $360,000 with a majority of cost going toward labor costs. 

RECOMMENDATIONS
Mattern provided recommendations for the best plan forward, and the technology that would assist in meeting the firm’s objectives. Recommendations included:
- Implementing auditing “out carded” records and permanently removing those that will not be returned to storage.
- Culling unnecessary off-site holdings by forming inventory into different categories based on retention eligibility if known or unknown.
- Adopting client/matter retention schedules that align with industry standards.  
- Scanning records retrieved from off-site storage to the DMS, forward documents with wet signature or court seal to clients, securely shred the balance, and permanently withdraw these boxes from storage.
- Addressing on-site records with a workflow of scanning all documents

Mattern also advised on the best technology in scanning hardware and DMS features that will further the firm’s digitization initiatives. 

SUMMARY
Data remediation is a costly endeavor and oftentimes a significant portion of the off-site material is found to be so poorly labeled that client/matters cannot be identified. Additional challenges are commonly encountered, including an inability to identify records custodians or these individuals have long since moved on, rendering a loss of historical knowledge needed for database corrections. For these reasons, many firms do not pursue data remediation efforts, or begin and later pivot from this, deciding instead to allow records previously sent to storage to be governed by their standard client/matter retention schedule. This approach does present some degree of risk for prematurely destroying records.  Those firms wishing to exercise a greater degree of caution tend to add years to their general client/matter retention schedule with most adopting 15 years when content detail has been lost to time.   

While the cost and time it takes to address historical paper records is significant, the importance of client data security and reputational security of the firm, allows little opportunity to do anything but fully address these records and to avoid this situation in the future by creating an IG policy that is in full compliance and workflows that follow strict retention guidelines and processes.