Mattern Establishes Information Governance Program and Restructures Off-site Records Storage Contracts to Ease Destruction and Improve Costs for a 28% Savings

Headquartered in the Midwest, this 193-attorney law firm with 9 offices had just completed a
conversion to Thomson Reuters’ 3E. The next hurdle for firm leadership was the deployment of an
Information Governance (IG) program addressing both their paper and electronic records as well as
improving the firm’s off-site records storage contract. After meeting Rob Mattern at an industry
show and attending a number of Mattern information sessions focusing on implementable IG
polices and retention schedules, the firm selected Mattern to lead the analysis.

BACKGROUND
Headquartered in the Midwest, this 193-attorney law firm with 9 offices had just completed a
conversion to Thomson Reuters’ 3E. The next hurdle for firm leadership was the deployment of an
Information Governance (IG) program addressing both their paper and electronic records as well as
improving the firm’s off-site records storage contract. After meeting Rob Mattern at an industry
show and attending a number of Mattern information sessions focusing on implementable IG
polices and retention schedules, the firm selected Mattern to lead the analysis.

PROCESS
Mattern began the project by assessing the firm’s current workflow, document management system
(DMS), and gathering locations of both paper and electronic records. In addition, Mattern
consultants conducted interviews with a cross-section of roles across the firm from top leadership to
legal administrative assistants to office managers.

Also, as part of the initial evaluation, the firm’s off-site holdings and annual spend were
benchmarked against the market with the aim of reducing their overall spend in off-site records
storage and improving the terms and conditions, while consolidating their contracts.
Here, Mattern recommended a competitive RFP process to the three incumbent service providers to
drive the best overall pricing and terms, and to include shredding in the RFP.

RESULTS
Using Mattern’s experience and knowledge of information governance (IG) best practices, current
data regulations, and risk mitigation, Mattern consultants made the following recommendations
based upon the thorough analysis of the firm’s IG needs:
• Identify IG Steering Committee members to review, fine-tune, and endorse IG policy
components.
• Appoint an Executive Sponsor to approve the policy with information retention and
compliance measures
• Consider 3rd party retention schedule research/subscription services
• Update language in client engagement and matter close letters
• Assign file naming convention project to select Steering Committee members and/or practice
group representatives to standardize nomenclature
• Update end user resources in support of IG policies and sanctioned use of firm systems in
training collateral
• Formally market and launch new IG framework, expectations, and incentive program

For the firm’s off-site holdings, after reviewing responses and conducting interviews with all the
service providers, the firm elected to renew its off-site storage agreement with the incumbent for a
10-year term and expand this partnership to include inventory in two of their satellite locations.

The results were an overall reduction in costs of 28%, fixed pricing, minimum storage requirements
that allow for destruction and a defined account termination process.

The firm’s Information Governance Manager gave Mattern an NPS score of 10 and commented:
"The review and recommendations that Mattern provided are very helpful and will help my
firm drastically improve our information governance policies, procedures and practices. I
look forward to continuing to work with Mattern on the actual implementation of those
recommendations."

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