Not possible for law firms.  Each firm must customize the retention rules that it adopts according to the jurisdictions in which it practices and its interpretation of the ethics guidance provided by those jurisdictions. There are 50 state bar associations in the US alone -- not counting DC and all of the city and county bars -- and each of these is fairly free to dictate the guidance under which their members practice law.  If a state provides guidance, each firm is then free to interpret the guidance in a way that they can justify.  Because there are no statutes or regulations governing law practice -- only bar standards of ethics -- firms can't be held to a baseline.  More importantly, each law firm develops its own culture, and its culture plays a big part in how the firm approaches the assumption and remediation of risk.  Some firms are leading the pack in adopting an information governance model where compliance has heavy weight, and some firms still have blinders on.  The textbook on legal records management that was written in 2003 provides best practices for developing records retention policies and programs, but even these must be customized by any adopting firm.

--Lee    

Lee R. Nemchek, MLS, CRM
Vice President, Records Management 
Oaktree Capital Management, L.P.
333 South Grand Avenue, 28th Floor
Los Angeles, CA  90071 
p +1 213 830-6252   f +1 213 830-8504
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www.oaktreecapital.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephen Cohen
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013 12:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Standardizing legal retention??

Has there been an effort to set a baseline for how law practices retain records? I wonder if there could be such a thing where there's a common set 
of rules, something like NIRMA for nuclear records? 

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