Emerging Best Practices in Legal Records Management.(Book review)

Emerging Best Practices in Legal Records Management. 2006. Primary Research Group. 70p. ISBN: 1-57440-078-9. Paper copy $295, electronic copy $345.

This new study from Primary Research Group begins with a summary of findings based on interviews with records management professionals at several law firms, a law school, and government entities. The summary contains a general overview of trends among the participants and a description of the details of interviews at six law firms, one court, library, one law school, and the National Archives & Records Administration.

The presentation style is informal and no effort is made to describe the research technique used or how these organizations were selected. The title is well chosen, as this publication is a description of emerging practices and the problems and concerns of records managers, but is not a definitive work on best practices. The ideas and experiences described by the managers interviewed give this work its usefulness, not any compilations of costs, practices, or trends it contains. The summary contains very general information about trends, but the only analysis is the ratio of records personnel to lawyers developed from, I believe, this very small sample.

The selection of institutions is interesting. While the majority is law firms, we also get descriptions of the case management practices at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, the National Archives & Records Administration, and the U.S. Court System for the District Courts. This certainly gives more breadth to the contents and reminds readers that legal records need management in all manner of institutions. This variety of institutions, however, makes comparisons difficult and the publisher does not try to use these interviews to create a compilation of practices or statistics. In fact, the Table of Contents makes it clear that different interviewees covered different issues and where they did cover the same topics the reports of the interviews are not arranged in the same subject order. Thus, if a reader is looking for every mention of OffSite Storage, it may be at the beginning, middle, or end of individual interviews depending on the institution rather than appearing in the same order in each. An editor's organizational skills would have made skimming for relevant topics much easier.

I ...