This book will help any law firm create and maintain an effective and well-organized records management program, including administration and storage of client files and administrative records in all types of media. Firms will learn to implement an efficient information, document, and file retrieval system, thus reducing costs, avoiding ethics violations, and ensuring client satisfaction. In addition, the book covers legal and ethics compliance when it comes to management and retention of both paper and electronic files.

Here's what you should know to manage data records efficiently With proper electronic data management, your business can lower costs, improve efficiency, eliminate duplication, and be protected in the event of a lawsuit. This book provides an overview of records management solutions and implementation strategies in plain, non-technical English. Step-by-step instructions show you how to begin managing records and information and how to maintain the program once you have it established. Sample forms for inventory, scheduling, and necessary documentation are also available on the companion website. Electronic records management offers cost savings, greater efficiency, and protection in case of legal action; this book gets you started on an effective data management system This plain-English guide helps you determine what constitutes a record, shows you how to inventory records and create an efficient way to file both electronic and paper copies, and explains how to create a retention schedule Walks you through switching to electronic record-keeping, what to look for in a records management system, implementing best practices, ensuring that your system will stay current, and using the system effectively Helps you assure that the destruction of any sensitive information is conducted and documented correctly Records Management For Dummies helps your business save money and improve efficiency with effective electronic records management.

Records Management is the classic guide to alleviating a perennial business problem: how to find information that's needed and sort it out from the avalanche of paper and data that's not. This completely updated edition shows records managers like yourself - whether you're experienced or new to the field - how to establish and maintain a first-rate program. The volume explains what information is essential to keep, what's practical and legal to toss, and how to organize it all for quick and easy retrieval. It explores both current takes on traditional systems and the latest advancements in imaging technology and CD-ROM. Plus, the author shows you how to effectively protect your organization's vital records - its very lifeblood - from destruction. This new edition of Records Management even includes a crucial new chapter on developing your project management skills - a key to success on the job today. Records Management leads you through the entire process, beginning at the moment a record is created and ending with its ultimate destruction. It shows you how to sell your program to senior management, develop a records retention schedule, store and index records properly, manage your company's vast and diverse files, and much more.

This report looks closely at legal records management, and provides information and analysis on staff size and training, attorney-records staff relations, outsourcing, negotiations with warehouse suppliers, use of digital imaging, use of RFID, retention policies, equipment purchasing plans, and other facets of legal records management. The study is based on detailed interviews with records and practice management professionals and partners at some of America's most prestigious law firms, courts and law schools. Among the organizations profiled: Thompson Hine, Dewey Ballantine, Kay Scholer, Fulbright & Jawarski, The National Archives & Records Administration, Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, the U.S. Court System for the District Courts, Thomas M. Cooley Law School and Darby & Darby.

Records Management Handbook is a complete guide to the practice of records and information management. Written from a multi-media perspective and with a comprehensive systems design orientation, the authors present proven management strategies for developing, implementing and operating a ’21st century’ records management programme. Where most available titles are biased toward dealing with inactive records, this book gives a balanced treatment for all phases of the record's life cycle, from creation or receipt through to ultimate disposition. The Records Management Handbook is a practical reference for use by records managers, analysts, and other information management professionals, which will aid decision-making, improve job performance, stimulate ideas, help avoid legal problems, minimize risk and error, save time and reduce expense. Special features of the second edition include: ¢ new chapters on record media, active records systems and records disposition ¢ new information on management strategies and programme implementation ¢ revised guidance and material on records appraisal and record inventorying ¢ expanded and increased information on retention scheduling, records storage and electronic forms.

Many organizations do not yet have a formal programme of records management, but increasingly they are recognizing the benefits of well managed records and the serious consequences of inadequate records systems. Establishing records management and maintaining an effective programme requires specialist expertise. This essential manual of practice provides a detailed guide to the concepts, skills and techniques of records management for organizational staff who have a responsibility for setting up, maintaining or restructuring a records management programme. It offers invaluable advice on the management of records in both electronic and traditional paper media, and focuses on the following areas: understanding records management analysing the context for records management classifying records and documenting their context creating and capturing records; managing appraisal, retention and disposition maintaining records and assuring their integrity providing access implementing records management. The appendices provide a wealth of additional information including a list of standards for records management, an annotated bibliography and sources of further information, and details of professional and advisory bodies. Readership: This much needed manual is an indispensable purchase for organizations wishing to introduce better practices for managing their records. The book is intended to be of value to experienced records managers as well as LIS practitioners and newcomers to the field. It should be on the desk of every manager and every information professional with responsibility for records management.