Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA BEST PRACTICES 20 are succeeding, they should communicate lessons learned. As for picking the right partner, stick to your checklist and look for any red flags: inadequate capitalization, outdated technology and high client turnover are all causes for concern. Check their client references and request multiple meetings with the partner to get a sense of how they operate. Demand to have substantive input in all decision-making involving insourced employees, but allow them to run the insourcing project the way they see fit. Finally, understand that insourcing is an iterative process, and both parties will learn and improve with each case. As economic pressures continue to mount, more law firms will turn to insourcing as a way to enhance services and improve efficiencies while lowering costs and improving profitability. Insourcing has helped us become more nimble and competitive in an industry environment that's going through a protracted process of disaggregation, as more firms shed functions and roles previously handled internally. Insourcing has also allowed us to offer our clients expanded services beyond litigation support and e-discovery, utilizing the most advanced technologies and implementing industry best practices. The thinking "it is cheaper to store paper records than it is to scan them" is misguided, simplistic, and just plain wrong. We worked with records and technology executives from nine large law firms (the "working group") to quantify the full cost of records storage, to bring the storage cost and contents model down to the box level, and to compare a production scanning operation that would substantially eliminate the flow of paper to offsite records storage. The result was an unbiased report that creates a usable decision framework to guide any firm through its own analysis of the topic and apply to its own unique data and situation. Here are just a few conclusions: • Based on working group data, the comprehensive hard costs of per-box storage over 10 years were $57.52, compared to scanning at $54.60 per box. • Most firms store records in bulk, indefinitely, at a high, continual cost, well beyond legal retention periods — a risk to the firm and their clients. • 51% of the paper heading to offsite storage is already electronically filed and available on line, or actually duplicated in the same storage box. • With an eye to the future, a firm should tackle its paper records challenges today: • If attorneys are using and storing paper documents that don't get scanned, what is the system of record — the paper file or the DMS? • What risks do the firm and its clients incur by not applying precise disposition policy to paper records? • As the balance tips toward attorneys who want a completely electronic matter file, and away from those who want to work with paper, how do you handle the transition period to accommodate both use preferences? The study's comparison significantly challenges conventional "just store it" mentality and serves as a call to action on the topic of paper records. Scan vs. Store: Which Costs More? by Steve Irons of DocSolid

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