Having worked for a consulting firm that also performed outsourcing services for 
clients, I have several views on the subject.

1) Law firms operate very differently because of the nature of the file assembly 
with work product and whatnot. That said, I've noticed a trend where law firms 
are making a concerted effort to return client-owned files as quickly as 
possible after the matter is closed.

2) Cloud computing providers are yet another matter as many of them are seeking 
to avoid customization as much as possible and generally have little or no 
interest is applying retention schedules to the data they store. If they will 
apply a retention period, it is likely to be applied equally to all data and it 
will be difficult to apply legal or tax holds.

3) Other professional services firms generally do not hold client records and 
are very unlikely to allow a client to specify the retention of the firm's work 
product. This was a major point of contention for my prior employer and clients 
because clients were always trying to set the retention period for time-keeping 
records and Accounts Receivable records. We never agreed to those terms because 
it would have been impossible to parse out records in those areas for each 
client and retain records to multiple retention schedules, while also trying to 
comply with our own.

4) Outsourcing arrangements are likely one of the few situations where the 
client can, in fact, specify the retention periods. However, early on in the 
engagement, both client and provider must be able to agree upon which records 
belong to the client and which records belong to the provider. We had a number 
of situations where we created administrative records for the various processes 
that we performed and had disagreements with clients over who actually owned the 
records. For example, if the outsourcer maintains a call center for the client, 
who owns the call recordings? Legacy records are another matter. We often took 
on records from a client that had never been properly maintained and we suddenly 
had a ton or work to do to get the records to the state required by the 
agreement. Then there's the matter of what happens to the records at the end of 
the agreement. Lawyers sometimes have a bad habit of writing language that 
mandates that the records are put back into "original order" at the end of the 
engagement. What does that mean when you take hard copy records and image them?

Contracting with an outsourcing provider with regard to records retention of a 
client's records is a very complex process and many providers do not have the 
records management expertise to understand the issues involved. I was fortunate 
to serve as the firm's records manager and also be engaged with clients to sort 
out what could and couldn't be done, but it took a lot of understanding of the 
firm's business practices to make good decisions. It also takes a records 
manager who is skilled in working with clients so what amounts to a fairly minor 
part of a thousand page agreement doesn't cause the whole agreement to go 
sideways. In general, the agreement for outsourcing will make a reference to 
records management / retention, but the nuts and bolts of the processes will be 
found in an operations manual that both parties agree to. That way you don't 
have to open the master agreement to modify a retention schedule.

Many of these issues are addressed in an ARMA Webinar that I did a couple years 
ago. From the ARMA Home Page, select "Web Seminars". The presentation I did was 
"Outsourcing and Records Management: Global Considerations". It appears to be 
available for $20 to ARMA members.

 Patrick Cunningham, CRM, FAI
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