Vladimir-

While I'm sure the firm who was handling the case would be glad to either
send these boxes to you, or destroy them for a fee, it may be advisable to
look into the contract for representation and find out if they have a longer
term obligation for maintaining these records for a period of time on your
behalf.  There may be an appeal, or subsequent litigation that would require
them to access these records and the last thing you would want to do is have
to produce them again in response to another data request.

You may also want to ask for a copy of whatever finding aid they have been
using to gain access to the records while in their custody and use that to
make a determination of what (if any) of these records you may need for
long-term use to limit what will ultimately be returned to you.  Another
thing to consider is to determine if during the course of representation as
a business function the firm elected to scan/image and store any of YOUR
records electronically, because IF THEY DID, these images would ALSO belong
to you.  Typically these are things done at a cost to you that may (or may
not) have appeared as a line entry on an invoice.

Finally, it's important to keep in mind that while these records may
represent the set used for the case, they are likely copies of your
'original originals', but they are no longer exact copies... it's a common
practice for records used in a case to either be Bates numbered, redacted,
or in some other manner annotated, so now these are 'new originals'. 
Someone (your general counsel possibly?) will need to make a determination
if they should be retained on that basis, assigned an independent record
series code, and have a retention period applied to them related to what
they represent.

Larry
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