Thank you Pilar for your thoughtful comments. I find my background is extremely useful and has given me many advantages in my current position (I think I'm FINALLY learning). I just sometimes wondered if my enthusiasm for IT (even tho' after my last job I decided I did not want to do it full time) is always so good for my staff. I had not been aware of ILTA before now and will definitely look that up and put a bug in my administrator's ear!
Laura Steinberg
Records Manager
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-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pilar McAdam
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 2:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [RM] IT(?) Question
Laura,
I'll give a slightly different perspective.
I'm a records manager who recently left corporate America and came to a law firm. In the company I came from, RIM could never get a place at the table with IT. It was extremely frustrating to witness software being implemented, along with the processes necessary to get it to work, and see that RIM compliance issues were being completely ignored, and knowing that the company would pay the price for this for years or decades to come.
My position in the law firm includes the traditional legal records departments of conflict of interest, new matter intake, and disposition of physical files, but I'm also responsible for setting up processes and systems that link information in our firm's DMS with the physical records side of things. To accomplish this we're slowly rolling out new software applications, and analyzing how the data is generated and used throughout the firm.
I am so grateful to be working with IT! I think RIM practitioners bring a unique and valuable perspective to the management of information.
While some of the tasks you're responsible for may not fall into traditional areas of RIM practice, I believe that more and more we'll be seeing records managers acting as the bridge between IT and other functions. IT department personnel are highly educated and extremely intelligent, as a rule, but they're usually disconnected from how the information that's stored within the systems they manage is used and they've not been exposed to many RIM concepts. So, their emphasis tends to be on providing software and system tools, keeping the networks and workstations operating, ensuring adequate storage for data, and minimizing costs. Enhancing usability and retrievability of information, as well as compliance issues, are often are not within their job descriptions.
Are you aware of ILTA (International Legal Technical Association, http://www.iltanet.org/default.aspx)? I looked for your firm in their membership list, but couldn't find it. They have a strong RIM group, and it's been a great resource for me.
Pilar C. McAdam, CRM
Director of Legal Information Systems
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
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Pilar C. McAdam, CRM
Director of Legal Information Systems
333 South Hope Street
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