Our litigation department issues litigation holds that are very broad, and rarely do they dial them back as the litigation progresses. They also rarely ever actually collect paper records as they are able to find almost all of the requested documents in electronic systems. They just have them put on hold to avoid any hint of spoliation. We have hundreds of boxes of records on hold. At least one office is currently paperless and everything they have in storage is there only because of holds -- about $150 a month a year ago when I last checked. I was thinking of proposing that once paper records have met their retention, the cost of continuing to hold the records should be transferred to the litigation the records are being held for. I would require the owning office to have a full inventory of what is marked for hold before transfer of the costs is approved.

The reasoning is twofold: 1) Many offices are just holding everything because they don't want to take the time or spend the money to inventory old records that were stored before our RM program was put in place. There would be a good incentive to get this done If they could move costs off their budget.  And 2) if the litigation group had to report the true costs of the holds they issue as part of the total cost of litigation, they might have an incentive to be a bit more specific with their holds. .... Or, knowing the litigation group, they would just use it to justify a bigger budget for their department : /

Has anyone tried anything like this?



Nolene Sherman
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Records Manager since 1996. Gone wonky since 1998.

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