P2P

P E E R T O P E E R M A G A Z I N E · W I N T E R 2 0 2 5 9 So you get this tragedy-of-the-commons situation. Everyone benefits from good information governance (ie, better risk management, more effortless knowledge transfer, reduced litigation exposure), but any individual partner can free-ride. They get all the benefits while personally avoiding the hassle of compliance. This free-riding goes unchallenged because peers don't want to police peers. Everyone knows who the violators are. Nobody wants to be the one to call them out. CLIENT SERVICE ABOVE ALL "The client comes first" is a deeply held professional value in legal culture, not a marketing catchphrase. And it creates a predictable collision with governance requirements. Picture this: A client needs a document immediately. Your governance policy says, "Classify it first, then send it through approved secure channels." What the attorney hears is: "Make the client wait while you complete bureaucratic nonsense." Or retention policies say you need to delete old matter files. The attorney thinks: "But what if the client calls asking about something from five years ago?" The cultural weight falls entirely on one side of this equation. Nobody ever got fired for being too responsive to clients. In that framework, governance always loses. RECOGNIZING CULTURAL WARNING SIGNS Before you can shift culture, you need to understand it honestly. These patterns indicate where culture and governance are not yet aligned. These are gaps that policy alone will not bridge. "THAT'S NOT MY JOB" The most common red flag is when everyone thinks information governance belongs to someone else. Attorneys think it's IT's responsibility. IT sees it as a records management problem. Records management thinks it requires buy-in from legal operations. Legal operations thinks attorneys need to drive it. This fragmented ownership means nobody feels truly responsible. Everyone can point to someone else as the "real" owner. And when everyone can do that, the culture has basically inoculated itself against change. You hear it in the language: "What does IT want us to do about retention?" instead of "What should our retention approach be?" That little shift from "we" to "they" tells you everything. TOLERANCE FOR STAR PERFORMERS Watch what happens when your highest-billing partner or biggest rainmaker violates governance policies. If the response is silence, or worse, if people make excuses ("She's too busy with the X matter," "He brings in too much business to worry about this stuff"), you're seeing culture in action. This selective enforcement teaches Peter brings over three decades of experience in legal technology, having served as CIO for two of Canada's largest law firms, where he advanced the use of technology to improve practice management and operational efficiency. He has also worked as a senior account manager, helping firms navigate complex technology landscapes and deliver practical solutions to operational challenges. Throughout his career, Peter has successfully led large-scale change management initiatives and has been an active contributor to the legal technology community, including serving on ILTA's Board of Directors and as Conference Co-Chair. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Peter Lamb Senior Account Executive iCompli by LegalRM

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