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Alan Pelz-Sharpe

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Smart lawyers and ECM

8-Feb-2008

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Industry Standards, Legal

I sat in on the keynote panel at LegalTech in New York yesterday. As an old cynic I tend to think that I have heard it all before (and I probably have), but yesterday I was jolted awake by some quotes that left me musing for a long time afterwards, not that they told me about new issues or problems, rather the clarity in which they stated them. Let me share some with you.

"What it says in the back-up policy is seldom what is actually happening"

"It can be near impossible to purge data once it is past retention"

"1GB of storage costs around 20 cents to buy -- 1GB of storage costs around $3,500 to review"

The basic principals -- of only managing and storing what is required, and of being as diligent about purging redundant and valueless data as in the preservation of records -- are central to ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and EAM (E-Mail Archiving and Management). The tools exist to help you do this, to dramatically lessen your management and storage needs, to improve your litigation readiness -- and frankly run a better information management environment and by default a more efficient business.

But the reality of the conflicts within enterprises -- the battles between IT and Business, between Legal and everyone else, the local turf wars, the lack of executive guidance and strategy -- leave most firms in a content hell-hole.

The quote of the day came from Andrew Drake, Senior Counsel at Nationwide "You have to ask....does your data truly belong where it sits today?" What a great question! I intend to steal that quote and use mercilessly in the future...