These questions are from “The Business Case for Retention Planning,” an AIIM Wednesday Webinar. View the archived presentation here.

Q: Law firms have special requirements in terms of retention. Unfortunately, many state bar associations do not give much guidance regarding documents such as drafts and attorney work product. Any suggestions of places to look to make sure we don't destroy the wrong documents or conversely keep things forever (the choice of many attorneys)?

Breeden: Law firm records management is probably almost unlike any other kind both because of the nature of the records and whose records they are. Unless the firm’s partners are very interested in destroying records at some point, I recommend scanning the paper and retaining them as electronic records provided they will allow destruction of the paper. I don’t think it is worth the time it would take to purge files before scanning and the risks are too great.

Q: When trying to "sell" the records retention program how do you deal with the objection that "indexing" (providing metadata about) electronic records will be an overhead they are not prepared to handle - additional effort when saving a document?

Breeden: You incur most of the cost in retaining the electronic records but none of the value if you can’t find them. The amount of metadata collected should be balanced so that the cost of creating it (the metadata) does not exceed the value in being able to find the records.

Q: Should the documentation department report to the legal department, the quality department, the IT department, or another department?

Breeden: It depends on how the organization is structured and should report to the department that gives it the best support. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of the departments you identify as well as others you have not. My order of preference would be Legal, Administration (only if Administration included IT and Policy), Information Technology, Policy, Compliance, Administration (if Admin did not include IT or Policy). If your organization has a high risk of litigation, then placing it under legal makes sense. It would seem intuitive to place records under the Information Technology department because they are the part of the organization responsible for building and maintaining the electronic record keeping systems and could greatly benefit from a close alignment with records management. Retention schedules are policies and so Policy might make sense but an important part of records management is ensuring that staff complies with retention policies and so the Compliance might make sense.

Q: What is the best way/tools to police a retention program?

Breeden: Get senior management support to develop a compliance review program or have an auditor audit the program. Good ECM programs will collect metadata that helps allow the audit of records retention and other business processes.

Q: How do you answer the question: I understand the value of reducing the number of boxes in storage, but what happens when I need something that was destroyed as part of this new retention program?

Breeden: Retention should always be based on the value of the record versus the cost to retain it. If a box is needed to protect your organization from losing a multi-million dollar lawsuit, save a life, prove that tens of thousands of dollars are owed by another organization or not owed by your organization, or the records contain some other major value, then they should not be destroyed. However, if it “would have been nice to have had the information” and the cost to scan or store the information exceeds its legal, fiscal, or business value, then the records should be destroyed. Also, records can sometimes actually be used in a court case by an opposing counsel to infer wrongdoing even if nothing improper was done.

Q: To build a record retention policy, where can I find regulatory & statutory requirements specific to our industry - Real estate & property management?

Breeden: I would check with any professional associations such as the “Institute of Real Estate Management” to see if they have guidance documents. I would also check the laws of the state or states you are operating in and any state or federal oversight agencies.

John Breeden is a Certified Records Manager and AIIM Fellow. He has a range of expertise in the ECM space, including records management, conversions (microfilm to image, paper to image or microfilm, image to microfilm), e-discovery, and document management/workflow.