This article appeared in Accounting and Financial Planning for Law Firms, an ALM/Law Journal Newsletters publication covering all financial aspects of managing law firms, including: building a law firm budget; rates and rate arrangements with clients; coordinating benefits for law firm partners; and the newest strategies to grow your firm and your career.

In 2020, law firms did what they had to do to continue serving their clients. Information governance may have been sacrificed in the face of an urgent, global crisis. As understandable as that is, it's time now to step back and assess best practices for the new operational model that is here to stay.

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Firms Cannot Govern Paper Scattered In Non-Firm Locations

Law firm operations have always been paper-centric — this now presents logistical and information security challenges. Setting up and managing a system where attorneys and support staff working remotely can request and receive paper documents from the firm's records department is complicated and poses significant risk to data privacy. On top of this, having paper documents scattered in various, non-firm locations in an unsecure, remote environment is the stuff of an information security administrator's nightmare.