My firm's fee agreement contains some information about the client's file that we create and maintain throughout the life of the matter, such as what typically happens to client documents versus the firm-created documents after the matter concludes.  In the past, it was assumed that all information contained in a client's matter file was paper-based.  In the last few years, we have been making the move to create and keep a majority of our firm-created documents in electronic format (and many of our client documents come to us in some form of electronic data).  I now have an interesting question put before me by one of our shareholders and I'm hoping that someone will have discussed this within their own firm and can offer a word or two of advice.

The shareholder has asked, since we use electronic filing for many of our client's emails and other things, do you think we should have a provision in our fee agreement that states that we may be paperless in some aspects?

We already warn the client in the agreement about their obligation to maintain their own electronic records and we do state that at the conclusion of services, we will maintain the client file for a period of time in accordance with our retention schedule, unless the client instructs otherwise, before the file is destroyed.  I've gone through our fee agreement's language several times and cannot find anything which states the particular format in which we (the firm) keep their records.  Does anyone feel it is necessary to explain to the client the format in which we keep their files?

Laura Steinberg
Records Manager
[cid:980154016@12072010-26DA]



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