Angie, may I begin by thanking you for raising this topic?

We have asked the very same questions internally.  I do not represent what I am about to share to be best practice.  Rather, it is what I believe to be the most logical, compliant, and common sense answer.  And I would love to know more about the challenges you have faced in depositions or production orders.  Please consider sharing some of these.

Several of the professionals in my department, folks I respect, looked at this question with me.  I believe the compelling issue that we found was what would remain if we retained the metadata.  Whether these be indexes to physical folders, paper documents, or boxes, there is information in these titles that provides knowledge about the case.  The quality and quantity of that information varies greatly from case to case.

Now, thinking a couple of years beyond the disposition of a case, the question was "Do I want anyone to glean information from the metadata for a case that was destroyed per our retention policy?"  The answer was "No!"  Not only would the metadata retain information about the case such as entities involved, but there would be no context remaining.  It seemed to me that a little information could be much more dangerous than all of the information.  Retaining metadata provides the grist for people with ill intent to form their own conclusions.

We decided that gone means gone.  And this is true for electronic as well.  The whole point of the disposition, in our opinions, is to eliminate the records.  All we choose to retain is similar to what you describe.  We have a folder called a "File History" that provides a place to document the disposition.  A person can find the case in our system and the only documentation will be something to relate that the records were destroyed according to policy along with any authorizations that were required to perform the disposition.

Full disclosure here: we are just in the process of completing our retention program for the new firm that came about from several mergers.  So some of what I describe here is in the final stages of being put in place.  But we have used this disposition process in previous incarnations with positive results.  Again, I would love to learn from you, Angie.  There may be facts of which we are ignorant and need to learn.


David B. Steward
Director of Records
 
HUSCH BLACKWELL LLP
4801 Main Street, Suite 1000
Kansas City, MO 64112
Direct:  816.983.8860
Fax:  816.983.8080
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