Shining a Flashlight on Dark Data in Law Firms by Charlene Wacenske

One of the things I love about working on the Law Firm Information Governance Symposium (LFIGS) task force papers is that the topics always seem to be practical and relevant. This year I had the great fortune of working on the dark data task force. Besides working with an awesome group of folks, I have been thinking about a lot about dark data. We all know the regular places to find it, such as shared drives, mailboxes for departed people, and boxes in workrooms. With these known black holes of data, I great take comfort in knowing that most of my colleagues are facing the same daunting issue.

What I didn't expect was all the other places where data was living the shadows. It seemed to me that since October (when we started the working on the paper) every time I turned around there was suspicious data that definitely needed a light shined on it. One example was archived boxes. In December, if you had asked me, Do you know what you have in storage? I would have said, Of course! We have a strong records management tool that we have been using for 15 years. And before that the firm had other record applications that we used to track boxes. Well, in January a devastating warehouse fire in Brooklyn turned that thought around. At that time, I found out that even though the application knew what was in most of the boxes, we still have about 8,000 boxes where the only record of the box and its contents was in printed binders (and ironically many of the binders were in storage). Who knew? Thank goodness we have NY folks who have been with the firm for over 20 years and knew about the binders.

My first reaction was shame and denial. How could this be true? What does that say about my records program? As I was lamenting (ok, maybe whining) to my dark data colleagues, they helped me realize that, of course, there is always going to be some data that gets left behind. We don't have enough time, money or people to make everything perfect all the time.

Working on the paper helped me find the courage to embrace the problem and come up with a plan to move this data from the shadows back into the light. I hope that after you read the paper, you get a flashlight and begin shining it on the dark data at your firm. Remember the most important thing: you are not alone and the law firm information governance community is there to lend support. Enjoy the paper.

The Dark Data Task Force Report: Identification and Remediation of Dark Data in Law Firms will be available on August 18. Check back here to get your copy when it's released.

For other advice and leading practices from the Law Firm Information Governance Symposium task forces, check out these reports:

HIPAA Omnibus Task Force Report

Matter Mobility Task Force Report

A Proposed Law Firm Information Governance Framework

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/industry/law-firms/shining-a-flashl...
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