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62 On the one hand, in-house corporate law departments in industries such as pharmaceuticals, banking and financial services may find that "scan everything" is a viable solution because they are required by law to keep records over a longer period of time. Once the records are scanned, the paper copy is destroyed, reducing storage costs significantly. Depending on the volume of records, companies embarking on large-scale digitization projects may also find that they have considerable leverage in negotiating the cost of scanning. The main challenge, then, is to ensure that the records management team has a system in place to track the scanned records, preferably with a unified view of all records held by the firm across all repositories. On the other hand, law firms with an extremely large volume of physical records, including those that are 25-30 years old, typically find it makes more sense to cull large batches of ag- ing records — 99% of which will never be looked at again — and to scan the rest on an as-needed basis. In other words, rather than postponing the day of reckoning through mass digitization, for most law firms it pays off in the long run to confront the albatross as soon as possible. Facing Up to Destruction Remember: When taking on the albatross, there is no need to panic. If you find yourself con-fronted with 20-40 years' worth of physical records to dispose of, a workable alternative to trying to "destroying everything ASAP" may be to plan the disposition in phases. For example, you can plan disposition by decade — records from before 1970, followed by matter closings from the 1970s and then 1980s matter closings. Modern RM systems enable the quick determination of who the main reviewers are. Typically, the older the matter, the less likely the responsible attorney is still with the firm, so it becomes straightforward to limit the review to a group of senior partners. In many cases, these reviews happen much more rapidly than you might imagine — with partners often able to confirm fairly quickly that there is no reason to keep records beyond a certain age and giving blanket approval for destruction. A challenge in conducting disposition reviews is that legacy RM systems have traditionally relied on printing out reports with a long list of files, which then need to be distributed, reviewed, marked and manually updated in the system. During a pandemic when key stakeholders are rarely in the office at the same time, coordinating reviews the old way is no longer workable nor efficient. With a modern RM system, the entire process is online. The records manager can trigger a review made up of all the files due for disposition, send notifications to the appropriate reviewers and track the status of where they are in the review process. Reviewers receive notifications, can see all the files they need to consider in one place and can submit approvals for disposition — or indicate a hold on the files that are not approved. The system automatically logs all activity, so there is never any question about who signed off on what and when. A modern system will also make it easier to break up a larger disposition review into a series of smaller reviews, so that it is a more manageable workload for the attorneys involved. Many firms have started to conduct regular disposition reviews for physical records on an annual basis. Using a modern RM system, it becomes easier to introduce more frequent disposition reviews — on a quarterly or even monthly basis — which many firms find less of a burden. By presenting shorter lists of records for disposition more frequently, the process becomes less cumbersome and results in storage cost savings — because you're not storing records longer than you need to, waiting for an annual disposition review. Forecasting ongoing costs — for physical records storage usage, destruction fees, as well as expected cost savings on future storage — is helpful in planning your approach to disposition. Presenting firm management with a clear picture of how much it will cost to destroy a large volume of files and when the costs will be recouped in the future through savings on offsite storage can help make the business case for eliminating the backlog as soon as possible. Measuring and Preventing Future Accumulation of Paper A critical part of dealing with the paper record albatross is making sure that it does not return. If your firm is committed to going paperless, why are you still allowing documents to be printed today? As more legal documents are signed electronically, the need to circulate printed documents has started to decline. Some law firms have banned employees from printing at home, due to client concerns as well as their own

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