Peer to Peer Magazine

55 WWW.ILTANET.ORG How do you get buy-in? Gillian: The benefits of digitization are self- evident. But we have people that are comfortable only in the analog world. Convincing them is tough. Listen to their pain points. Have a strategy. Jed: Yes, don't tell them what to do. Have a conversation. Break the process down and show how you do it by practice group and how you will accomplish goals. People need to be involved and have a voice. Gillian: Focus on the practice areas that are open to digitization and having success. It provides optimism. IP is an area that embraces this wholly because so much of their inbound is already electronic. What will impact information governance the most in the next five years? Gillian: Information security and client compliance. Jed: Outside counsel guidelines are only becoming more prevalent in every single firm. They're pushing a lot of firms to move away from a records focus toward the big-picture view of information governance. There's a trend toward limiting access to only maer teams for client data. That can be a challenge for a firm's infrastructure. Clients have their own retention schedules based off a maer close date. A client's idea of when a maer closes is different from what a firm thinks of as a maer closed. Also, as digital natives become partners in the next three to nine years, things will start to change a lot faster. P2P Why move from paper-based records management to digital IG? Gillian: The goal is practical. It's to secure data and protect the firm and its clients. Jed: Three benefits tend to stick out. First, there's a cost reduction that comes with moving from a physical, paper world to an electronic one. Second, it's going to be easier to search, find and classify documents and streamline the retention and destruction process. Third, as clients get savvier about how their data is handled, the firm will be much beer equipped to demonstrate security. Gillian: If a client calls and it is 11:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve, how much beer does the firm look if the aorney can immediately respond and send the needed documents? It speaks to the value of digitization internally. You can sell that to clients: We can service you 24/7, no maer where the aorney is. Jed: Once aorneys and staff at a firm see the results, they get excited. They can see it's easier for them to work. But until we get to that point, it's our job to keep pushing forward. What do you need to support IG from a digital perspective? Gillian: You need a much tighter collaboration between IT and IG. Your IG professional will care deeply about the location of information, its categorization and metadata. The infrastructure person wants to know what can be deleted over time to keep servers from blowing up. You have to bring them together under the CIO. Jed: Oen, clients say, "We'll get a solution and it'll fix everything." That's not the case. You have to look at the processes and policies to see what the firm is trying to accomplish. Technology should be put in place to facilitate compliance. Gillian: Exactly. Policies, procedures, people and technology—you have to succeed with all of those. The layer on top of that is change management. It's like a really nice bento box with a ribbon around it. Everything has to have its correct place. Jed: I've interviewed partners who say, "Let's stop printing and using paper, but not for me." That approach works against IG. A lot of firms are still supporting two different file and record-keeping policies—one for paper and one for digital. You can't focus on paper file retention and destruction and ignore the electronic files. Blisters vs. Paper Cuts: Advice from a CIO and an Information Governance Expert ASK THE EXPERT GILLIAN POWER Gillian Power is the chief information officer for Lathrop Gage LLP. She is responsible for aligning the strategic direction of the firm's technology and information governance and management. She oversees all aspects of technology services and resources at the firm. Power serves on the firm's Diversity Committee. She is an active volunteer in the legal technology community, having served for five years as a committee member, including two of those years as a thought leader for the annual International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference. She was a recipient of an ILTA Distinguished Peer Award in 2011 for the area of server/operations and was a shortlist nominee for the ILTA Distinguished Peer Award for IT Professional of the Year in 2013 and the ILTA Distinguished Peer Award for Leadership in 2014. JED BRONSTEIN Jed Bronstein, information governance consultant for InOutsource, has spent 15 years within law firms. Most recently, he served as records manager for a large national law firm where he gathered extensive firsthand experience regarding information governance and project management. At InOutsource, he guides Am Law 200 law firms through processes such as information governance needs assessments, records management solutions implementations, policy and procedure development and cost containment initiatives. Once attorneys and staff at a firm see the results, they get excited. They can see it's easier for them to work. But until we get to that point, it's our job to keep pushing forward.

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