P2P

48 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 P R I N G 2 0 2 3 collaboration services has rocketed since the start of the pandemic. These tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, don't offer archive storage. Everything is just so called "hot" storage – meaning the storage media provide fast, easy access to data. But it can also mean that the costs of continually increasing electronic data storage volumes are becoming uncomfortable. A December 2022 study showed that 500 UK technology leaders in mid-to-large sized companies were spending up to one-third of their IT budget on ballooning data storage costs. Survey respondents also thought that the rising costs of data would be "unsustainable" by 2025. 10 Likewise in the US, 68% of IT managers described cost as their main data storage pain point in 2022 because their budgets aren't keeping up, and the cost of storage is doubling every four years. 11 For law firms who've negotiated a per user volume for cloud-based storage in a document management system, rising storage costs may not be immediately troubling, but they will find you. It's another reason why firms should be managing their data minimization much more actively to control the ever- increasing volume of data. Law firms are bad at data minimization So much for the many perils of poor data minimization. But it really matters because there's evidence that law firms aren't doing data minimization well. Best practice is a data retention policy, realized via a data retention schedule, that's enabled by procedures and systems, and backed by controls and oversight. Yet only just over half (53%) of the respondents to the ABA's 2021 cybersecurity survey said their firm even had a policy to manage data retention. 12 Moreover, even where a policy exists, it's often not enforced. A poll conducted during a recent LegalRM webinar suggested only 26% of firms with policies were implementing them. It's also the case that even when a data retention policy and schedule are being implemented, the agreed schedule often isn't being applied to the firm's electronic records. LegalRM recently worked with a mid-sized firm and discovered that more than half of its DMS-based records were overdue for destruction. That's a considerable amount of excess data exposing the firm to unnecessary costs and risks. Nor did this consider all the other possible data repositories, including File Share, OneDrive, SharePoint, HR database, and the firm's time and billing or practice and case management systems. What challenge of data minimization Why are firms so bad at data minimization? It's partly because it's a complex area. Many firms are transitioning from predominantly physical record keeping to on- premises electronic storage and increasingly to cloud- based document management systems. For now, they could have elements of all three. They might be overwhelmed by the sheer number of dispersed physical and electronic data repositories, even as the volume of data held by the firm continues to rise inexorably. Q 1 W H I T E P A P E R S 10. https://techmonitor.ai/technology/data/data-storage-costs-uk-it/ 11. https://www.lightedge.com/blog/the-data-explosion-and-hidden-data-storage-costs-in-the-cloud-could-object-storage-be-the-answer 12. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/publications/techreport/2021/cybersecurity/

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