On June 1, 2010 the Red Flag Rules of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) will affect business and organizations. These rules are designed to protect the identity of your clients or customers.

Businesses such as financial institutions, banks, mortgage companies, security companies will be required to develop and implement policies and procedures to identify possible identity theft or Red Flags. Other businesses and organizations that have customer accounts and account that have a revolving credit line, will also need to implement the policies and procedures to detect and prevent possible identity theft or Red Flag Rules.

The 5th Records Management Networking Forum was held on Thursday 11th February 2010 at CMS Cameron McKenna's London office. This event focussed on Offsite Storage Vendors.

 The forum took a two part format which included a presentation of the survey results conducted across the market by Legal RM, and, secondly, a questions and answers session with a panel of leading offsite storage vendors, including, Iron Mountain, Deepstore, Wincanton, Restore, Squirrel and The Hill Company.  Questions were submitted in advance by law firms and each panel member was invited to provide their answers. The event was well attended with firms represented from across the UK

To access minutes from this meeting click here.

e-Legal Technology.org is a specialist directory and resource tool for lawyers, legal professionals and legal technology specialists and can be accessed at http://www.e-legaltechnology.org/

At the beginning of December Legal RM set up the "Legal Records Management Group" on LinkedIn to support the legal community around various aspects of Physical and Electronic Records Management.

Keith Dacey, Director at Legal RM said, "Following the success of the Legal RM Networking Forums which we have been running for almost two years, we felt there was a need for firms to be able to reach out to their peers as and when required, in order to promote best practices within the Legal and wider Professional Services Community" Dacey continued "Our quarterly meetings are sometime not regular enough for firms to  be able to share ideas or ask a peer or  friend in another firm, when they have a problem. The Legal Records Group on LinkedIn now provides this platform for them".

Further to research carried out by Legal RM as part of our on going peer to peer networking forums, in conjunction with the majority of the UK Top 100 law firms, the following article was written in the latest Legal Technology Insider. A full list of findings will be published shortly on our website. Thanks to everyone who participated in this survey!

We are in an era in records management in which we must manage electronic records. But many of us are not sure just how to maintain electronic files. Do we maintain in native format; how do we maintain the integrity of the electronic file, should the metadata be maintained how do we manage the ram data, etc. All these are questions and we are all struggling for answers. I believe we look at past records management practices for possible answers as the media for record keeping has changed many times and must determine the best course of action.

The 4th Records Management Networking Forum was held on Thursday 5th November at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's London office. This event focussed on cost savings in physical records management and was well attended by law firms across the UK.

To access minutes from this meeting click here.

It was decided that the next event (14th January 2010 at CMS Cameron McKenna's London offices) will again focus on cost savings with a specific benchmarking of off-site storage vendors associated costs & services.

Last week's Legal Technolgy showcased the official iCompli Records Management product launch highlighting the significant costs savings associated with implementing the iCompli system - leverage our ground breaking SaaS model (Software as a Service) including no upfront software, support, maintenance, implementation or consultancy fees or minimum term!

Olswang LLP, today announce their selection of the iCompli records management suite, provided by Legal RM Ltd, risk and compliance specialists.

iCompli is a groundbreaking records management solution for professional services firms, which is available as a SaaS, no capital cost bundle, (including software, support, maintenance, implementation training and consultancy) negating the barriers often associated with enterprise software solutions.

The innovative iCompli model, along with its forward thinking development programme, were key in the selection process and allowed Olswang to take advantage of dramatic cost savings from day one. Sam Morley, Olswang's File Storage Manager, said "even at this early stage in our adoption of iCompli, we have reduced our file handling time by 70%".

Legal RM, as an established organisation in the risk and compliance sector look to support professional services firms through their various networking events and discussion groups.

As part of this we would like to ask you to support Chris Francis, Records Manager at Nabarro LLP who is currently preparing his Masters Degree in Records Management. His chosen topic area is: 'Is it possible for UK law firms to rely exclusively on the electronic record to fully meet their legal requirements?'

In order for Chris to get an informed opinion of current trends, policies, working practices and culture within UK law firms he has put together a survey which is completely anonymous. Could we ask you to be so kind as to clink on the link below and fill in this survey. Not only will this help Chris in completing his paper, we will also be publishing some of the key findings of the survey on our website for all to see and use.
 
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=NCKHI_e32fb8fe 
 
Your help is greatly appreciated and should you have any queries please feel free to contact us. Don't forget to pass on this blog post to others interested in Electronic Records Management.