Law firm reduces risk and increases space with Iron Mountain Clean Start

Industry

Legal

Challenge

Following years of routine operations, M&A activity, and employee turnover, this New York based regional law firm faced the challenge of cleaning up its office space and organising information assets. The firm had unsecured and unidentified information, including documents and IT equipment, located throughout the workplace. With limited in-house resources and expertise, it was unable to securely and effectively complete the project.

Solution

Iron Mountain Clean Start^®

Outcome

• Inventoried, sorted, classified, organised, and tagged over 13,000 files
• Elevated risk management
• Eliminated potential employee wellness hazards
• Boosted cross-functional productivity
• Streamlined access to case files from any location
• Enhanced space management

Following years of routine operations, M&A activity, and employee turnover, this New York-based regional law firm faced the challenge of cleaning up its office space and organising information assets.

The firm had unsecured and unidentified information, including documents and IT equipment, located throughout the workplace.

With limited in-house resources and expertise, it was unable to securely and effectively complete the project and turned to Iron Mountain Clean Start for help.

Law offices are in a league of their own when it comes to information management. Every piece of information has a part to play with specific regulatory and retention policies attached to each file and asset.

For this full-service New York-based regional law firm, keeping client and other organisational files in order is necessary to ensure productivity and compliance. Well established and closely followed processes for storing, tracking, and utilising physical and digital information would allow the firm to work seamlessly, efficiently, and productively across multiple teams and locations.

YEARS OF NORMAL OPERATIONS CREATES DISORGANISATION AND CLUTTER

Years of operations, M&A activity, and employee turnover resulted in the need for the firm to clean up, organise, and reconfigure its information, processes, and office space. Through everyday work activity, it was evident that there was limited tracking, protection, and organisation of information and no way to clearly identify files. All of this led to the risk of lost productivity, over retention, and even a data breach.

Even more concerning, some records were located in an unsecure basement storage room where another tenant of the building had access. There were no locks on the doors, and all the files were stacked on shelves or piled on the floor. Anyone could walk through the storage room and sift through sensitive client information, which posed significant risk to the law firm.

Due to the basement location, some of the files had also suffered water damage. This resulted in piles of records on the floor damaged with inches of black mold.

To add another layer of complexity, many of the firm’s legacy files were commingled with new client records, which could lead to potential lawsuits for conflicts of interest.