The Lawyers Guide To Records Management And Retention

This book will help any law firm create and maintain an effective and well-organized records management program, including administration and storage of client files and administrative records in all types of media. Firms will learn to implement an efficient information, document, and file retrieval system, thus reducing costs, avoiding ethics violations, and ensuring client satisfaction. In addition, the book covers legal and ethics compliance when it comes to management and retention of both paper and electronic files.

This report looks closely at legal records management, and provides information and analysis on staff size and training, attorney-records staff relations, outsourcing, negotiations with warehouse suppliers, use of digital imaging, use of RFID, retention policies, equipment purchasing plans, and other facets of legal records management. The study is based on detailed interviews with records and practice management professionals and partners at some of America's most prestigious law firms, courts and law schools. Among the organizations profiled: Thompson Hine, Dewey Ballantine, Kay Scholer, Fulbright & Jawarski, The National Archives & Records Administration, Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, the U.S. Court System for the District Courts, Thomas M. Cooley Law School and Darby & Darby.

Records Management is the classic guide to alleviating a perennial business problem: how to find information that's needed and sort it out from the avalanche of paper and data that's not. This completely updated edition shows records managers like yourself - whether you're experienced or new to the field - how to establish and maintain a first-rate program. The volume explains what information is essential to keep, what's practical and legal to toss, and how to organize it all for quick and easy retrieval. It explores both current takes on traditional systems and the latest advancements in imaging technology and CD-ROM. Plus, the author shows you how to effectively protect your organization's vital records - its very lifeblood - from destruction. This new edition of Records Management even includes a crucial new chapter on developing your project management skills - a key to success on the job today. Records Management leads you through the entire process, beginning at the moment a record is created and ending with its ultimate destruction. It shows you how to sell your program to senior management, develop a records retention schedule, store and index records properly, manage your company's vast and diverse files, and much more.

Records Management Handbook is a complete guide to the practice of records and information management. Written from a multi-media perspective and with a comprehensive systems design orientation, the authors present proven management strategies for developing, implementing and operating a ’21st century’ records management programme. Where most available titles are biased toward dealing with inactive records, this book gives a balanced treatment for all phases of the record's life cycle, from creation or receipt through to ultimate disposition. The Records Management Handbook is a practical reference for use by records managers, analysts, and other information management professionals, which will aid decision-making, improve job performance, stimulate ideas, help avoid legal problems, minimize risk and error, save time and reduce expense. Special features of the second edition include: ¢ new chapters on record media, active records systems and records disposition ¢ new information on management strategies and programme implementation ¢ revised guidance and material on records appraisal and record inventorying ¢ expanded and increased information on retention scheduling, records storage and electronic forms.