Background
Headquartered in the Midwest, this 193-attorney law firm with 9 offices had just completed a conversion to Thomson Reuters’ 3E. The next hurdle for firm leadership was the deployment of an Information Governance (IG) program addressing both their paper and electronic records as well as improving the firm’s offsite records storage contract. After meeting Rob Mattern at an industry show and attending a number of Mattern information sessions focusing on implementable IG polices and retention schedules, the firm selected Mattern to lead the analysis.
Process
Mattern began the project by assessing the firm’s current workflow, document management system (DMS), and gathering locations of both paper and electronic records. In addition, Mattern consultants conducted interviews with a cross-section of roles across the firm from top leadership to legal administrative assistants to office managers.
Also, as part of the initial evaluation, the firm’s off-site holdings and annual spend were benchmarked against the market with the aim of reducing their overall spend in offsite records storage and improving the terms and conditions, while consolidating their contracts.
Here, Mattern recommended a competitive RFP process to the three incumbent service providers to drive the best overall pricing and terms, and to include shredding in the RFP.
Results
Using Mattern’s experience and knowledge of information governance (IG) best practices, current data regulations, and risk mitigation, Mattern consultants made the following recommendations based upon the thorough analysis of the firm’s IG needs:
- Identify IG Steering Committee members to review, fine-tune, and endorse IG policy components
- Appoint an Executive Sponsor to approve the policy with information retention and compliance measures
- Consider 3rd party retention schedule research/subscription services
- Update language in client engagement and matter close letters
- Assign file naming convention project to select Steering Committee members and/or practice group representatives to standardize nomenclature
- Update end user resources in support of IG policies and sanctioned use of firm systems in training collateral
- Formally market and launch new IG framework, expectations, and incentive program
For the firm’s off-site holdings, after reviewing responses and conducting interviews with all the service providers, the firm elected to renew its offsite storage agreement with the incumbent for a 10-year term and expand this partnership to include inventory in two of their satellite locations.
The results were an overall reduction in costs of 28%, fixed pricing, minimum storage requirements that allow for destruction and a defined account termination process.
The firm’s Information Governance Manager gave Mattern an NPS score of 10 and commented:
"The review and recommendations that Mattern provided are very helpful and will help my firm drastically improve our information governance policies, procedures and practices. I look forward to continuing to work with Mattern on the actual implementation of those recommendations."
