Hi Tracy, I have been out of the legal industry for about 1 1/2 years, but this article is a pretty decent summary of the legal RIM environment when I left back in 2015.  The emphasis on the expanding role of technology in RIM and the new skill set requirements for RIM staff is very true in my experience - although this has been reality for several years, just becoming more pronounced as technology continues to evolve.  Minus maybe the IG references, much of this article could have been written 5 or more years.  That isn't a commentary on the quality of the article, but rather that this vision for a law firm RIM Department has been around for quite some time (the LFIGS group has some good publications in this area).  

In my discussions with other RIM managers/directors in the legal field (and to an extent my own personal experience), the real challenge with the vision in the article is convincing the C-Level Executives to support this "progressive" approach for RIM.  I think some outside influences have helped over the past few years, such as: an increasing (although sometimes slowly developing) focus on IG in the Legal community, the implementation of HITECH and other privacy/security regulations that impact law firms and their clients, the relevance of e-discovery to the legal community, and pressures on financial institutions to comply with increasingly strict industry regulations (hence passing these requirements onto their law firms).  These "influences" and others seem to have hastened the ability of some Legal RIM Departments to achieve this vision.  In my experience, the challenge of lawyer mobility was also an impetus towards a more digital records environment for law firms (and, funny enough, the terrible winter weather a couple years back where attorneys really began to appreciate the benefits of VPN and digital records).

Thanks for sharing the article!


Brett Wise CRM, CIPP/US, IGP, CIP | American Board of Pediatrics
Director of Records & Information Management
111 Silver Cedar Court
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
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