P2P

47 I L T A N E T . O R G want to start proving themselves by posting billable hours a soon as possible; and will equally want to keep their transferring clients happy by immediately dealing with their matters. The firm will also want to get its relationship with its new clients off on the right foot by showing them some early love and attention. That said, the onboarding firm must resist the immediate wholesale ingestion of the data as soon as it arrives, for two reasons. Firstly, it's not unknown for the firm that's losing the client to make that client a counteroffer – such as a lower billable rate – that they accept. Or the client may have other reasons for changing their mind about the move – to do with personalities, relationships, known expertise and so on. The situation can arise that even after the client transfer request has been submitted and the transfer of some data taken place, the client enacts a U-turn. In this circumstance, the firm in receipt of the data has no legitimate reason to keep it and needs a mechanism for making a business risk decision on destroying electronic data and returning physical data as soon as possible. Keeping any of this electronic data will expose the firm to risks that it needn't take. Also – as an aside – firms should note that individual lawyers might have different perceptions of file ownership and custody that need to be carefully managed. This might include some education on data security, and on the ethical and compliance risks of file transfers, and policies on the use of flash drives and BYOD etc. It gets even more complicated in instances where the client decides that its interests are best served by leaving some matters with the original firm and moving others. For example, a big corporate client might decide to leave conveyancing with the first firm, because they feel their portfolio is well known and understood by the lawyers there; while their M&A Director wants to go with the lawyer who's leaving, because of a strong working relationship. In cases like this a huge amount of care needs to be taken to ensure that the right data is being processed. Meanwhile the second reason why the data shouldn't be too hastily ingested is because the conflict checks may well turn up a genuine reason why the onboarding firm is indeed conflicted out of the work. This could be a conflict of interest with an existing client, or it could stem from prohibitions on who the firm can work with in an existing client's OCGs. In which case, as above, the firm must destroy the data without delay. It's also possible that there are other reasons – strategic or ideological – why a firm would prefer not to take on a putative new client. The receiving firm needs a process for accepting each new client in principle before the ingestion of its data begins. Understanding the data At the point at which the firm is confident it can accept the new client, the next step is understanding the large volumes of data that are being transferred: the formats that electronic data are held in – from Word documents and emails to Excel spreadsheets and PDFs – and the systems they've come from; the volume and types of physical data. This can be a challenging task because often different offices have different systems, even within the same off boarding firm, plus the firm may not have taken much time to organize the data well. Relatedly, the capabilities of the individuals tasked with enacting the transfer will vary. You can have an information governance professional or records manager who's really savvy and knows how to get the information out of the exporting database in a format that the onboarding firm can easily accept. Or you might be dealing with a person who's used to scanning barcodes on files and boxes and has no idea beyond writing out an email listing what's in each box.

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