In May this year I published a blog of horror stories about poor records management leading to the loss of our legal heritage. I’m glad to now be able to list some success stories about the rescue of private sector records documenting our legal heritage. Who is rescuing our legal records? The National Archives, of course, is a massive collector of government and quasi-government legal...
When it comes to managing their records, whether their own business records or client files and documents, we do not really know just how good or bad the legal profession in the UK is at records management in general, and at respecting privacy and data protection in particular, in comparison to the rest of the private sector. The main source of information on data breaches,...
The second Legal Records at Risk seminar was held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) on 23 November 2016. The purpose of the seminar was to investigate the business benefits to private sector institutions specialised to law of keeping records accessible for internal business use and, eventually, external research. There were four presentations as follows: The value of preserving legal records: the...
Our initial research over the first six months of the project suggests not. We have so far contacted 40 institutions specialised to law (ISLs), including law firms, membership bodies, regulatory bodies, alternative dispute resolution bodies, pressure groups, training institutions and ancillary bodies such as legal publishers. We have had only 10 responses (2 negative; 2 positive; 6 tentative). What did we ask them? These questions:...
10 December 2015, 2.30-5.30, Conference Room, IALS You are cordially invited to attend the first seminar to launch the Legal Records at Risk project. The project has been set up to investigate the findings of previous studies, including the British Records Association’s report on Records at Risk (2011), that significant records of many institutions specialised to law are at risk, especially because of recent developments...
Welcome to the Legal Records at Risk project. According to previous studies including the British Records Association (BRA) report on Records at Risk (2011), significant records of many institutions specialised to law (ISLs) are at risk, especially because of recent developments in legal services, IT, economy and globalisation. Many records are now being “born digital” with many more paper records are being digitised. New technology...
