P2P

34 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 proper governance in Teams is not just aspirational, but eminently achievable with the right care, feeding and education. And that's the key - making sure that the appropriate pilot group is identified (tips on that later) and that the right project team is in place to educate and support the implementation. One of the benefits of our virtual situation is that this type of implementation is easily targeted and one can avoid getting bogged down during the rollout. It is likely that your mailroom has implemented some sort of plan to capture and deliver incoming mail. Work with office services/scanning to see how much paper has come in and where it's gone. From this, you can build improvements to the process. If you've implemented such a plan, the goal should be to not return to the way it was. Attorneys and staff have gotten accustomed to having their mail delivered to their inboxes. It is not much more of a reach to then capture that digital scan in the DMS. While not initially ideal, it is one that lawyers and staff have quickly become accustomed to and efficiencies can be further built in. For the first few weeks after offices closed, paper file retrieval activity was probably minimal, the result of attorneys attempting to re-prioritize until anticipated office re-openings. However, the client's needs prevail and it was likely necessary to access those documents tucked away at the offsite storage facility. The opportunity arose to partner with the offsite vendor to image on demand rather than coordinating the logistics and assuming the risk of having boxes of paper files delivered to residential addresses. If you're in the position of having to actually retrieve those files for delivery to the office, consider engaging your contract services teams if you have them. Most firms have at least a small core team of people manning the ship (office services, document services, etc.), and under the direct guidance of an experienced team member, these teams can digitize requested documents and deliver them electronically. It bears mention that if you are taking advantage of any of these opportunities, that it would be prudent to note this effectively in your Records Management System - once scanned the paper can either be destroyed (if the firm's policy allows for it) or returned to storage - never having to be retrieved again until its final disposition. Just like at home, downtime is a great opportunity to get your house in order. Take a look at all the data sitting in local drives. Work alongside your IT team, using their tools to monitor it and construct a targeted outreach program to encourage people to file into the DMS (or delete it if no longer needed), highlighting the benefits of having those files available and accessible to their larger teams. Is your DMS set up in a way that it is useful for people? One of the biggest challenges to IG adoption isn't the systems themselves but how they are designed and implemented. Are the right folder structures and permissions in place so that working groups can both file and locate drafts and documents easily? This is a good time to engage with paralegals and secretaries whose schedules may allow while working away from the office. The trick here is to minimize the number of folders and N E X T W A V E O F I N F O R M A T I O N G O V E R N A N C E "The goal should be to not return to the way it was."

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