Todd Johnson asked:

"For those of you who used an outside consultant to do the legal research on
your Records Retention Schedule, did you also have your legal department
review it for an added level of thoroughness? I would like to know your
thought process either way."

I have found that it is absolutely critical to have an internal legal review of the Records Retention Schedule recommendations proposed by research consultants.

Example: When I worked for a very large aerospace corporation, we outsourced the legal research supporting our retention schedule.  The consulting company who performed the research worked very hard for us, but did not have any particular expertise in the aerospace industry.  As a result, they made some assumptions about whether certain Federal regulations would apply to us (they decided the regulations did NOT apply).  However, upon review by our own attorneys, this assumption came to light.  (To go into more details, the regulation in question dealt with manufacturers of aircraft components.  The consultant assumed that, since our company outsourced many of its components, it was not a component manufacturer at all.  This was untrue; a significant portion of the components used in the company's aircraft WERE manufactured internally.)

Needless to say, the assumption was wrong and, if we'd accepted their recommendations for retention without this internal review, the results could have been terrible.

Outsourcing the legal research should not be perceived as also outsourcing responsibility for the accuracy of the retention schedule.  I believe that outsourcing this research is an effective use of expert resources.  However, it's unrealistic to expect a consultant to know your business as well as you do.  The optimal arrangement should be a partnership between the consultant and their client, each learning from the other.

One woman's opinion.

Pilar C. McAdam, CRM
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Los Angeles, CA

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