Every company needs a detailed data retention policy. It’s essential to reduce clutter and improve organization on the administrative end of things. Your policy should streamline processes and ensure that you know what to do with any data collected by your company.
For a law firm, there is even more to worry about. What should you keep? What may you delete or shred? Are hard copies necessary?
Paper discovery leads to huge volumes of printed records and paperwork that must be stored properly. Even though it doesn’t take up much physical space, keeping digital storage organized is challenging. The fact of the matter is, storing your print and digital documentation is simpler with a data retention policy in place.
What to Know About Data Retention
Data retention is more than just deciding to store your files alphabetically or numerically and in what sort of filing cabinet. These policies are intricate and include step-by-step instructions for handling certain types of documents.
A few of the things your data retention policy should cover are:
- Knowing when data were created and when they were last used
- The reason data were collected
- Any specific regulations or requirements for the data
- Ways to manage data that overlap multiple categories
- Ways to identify the data
- A unified and, preferably, streamlined/automated interface to handle data
What You Should Archive and What You May Delete
When it comes to paper discovery, you want to hold on to as few papers as possible. After all, those boxes take up a lot of space in a small office.
However, some documents might need to be kept for a specific amount of time. You should hold on to these documents for the necessary period but plan to have them archived and/or deleted when appropriate.
On the other hand, things like job applications that are no longer under review or consideration for the future or your old to-do lists can go. Your data retention guidelines should clearly outline what can be gotten rid of immediately and what needs to be archived temporarily or even permanently.
Best Data Retention Policies for Paper Discovery
Legal discovery can leave you with mountains of paperwork to sift through. The best data retention policies have guidelines for every type of paperwork that comes through your office.
Ideally, you will have these policies in place before you begin operating your business. Otherwise, you’ll need to develop a system quickly to ensure you don’t lose any crucial information.
Some benefits of a good data retention program include:
- Defining data types and how they should be stored
- Removing duplicate or out-of-date data
- Ensuring all employees across legal and IT teams know how data should be handled
Effectively Communicating Data Retention Policies to Your Company
The biggest benefit of a proper data storage policy is that it keeps everyone on the same page. You should make sure that all employees, especially new hires, are given a copy of the data retention policy to refer to. This will ensure that you don’t lose any important data unnecessarily.
There are many ways you can communicate your policies for data with the people working for you. The best thing you can do is make it a part of new hire paperwork while having an easily accessible digital copy for people to refer to as needed.
How Data Retention Differs from Data Preservation
They might seem similar, but you should have separate policies for data retention and data preservation. Data retention policies determine what data your company should or can keep, how long it should be stored, and how it is stored and destroyed.
On the other hand, data preservation involves data held voluntarily in anticipation of a legal matter rather than out of legal obligation. This is a critical step in pre-litigation risk management.
Your company should have a carefully planned data retention and data preservation policy that keeps everyone in the know on how to handle different types of data. Both should include digital and paper discovery documents to ensure nothing vital gets deleted or shredded too soon or is held for years longer than was needed.
Contact Key Discovery today at 617-348-9360 if your law firm or company law department needs help with litigation support services. We offer a variety of legal support services including paper discovery, eDiscovery, court reporting and more.