Staking a Legal Claim

Let’s face it, lawyers are not always the professionals most people want to see on a regular basis. For many people they are intimidating. For others, the appearance of a lawyer is cause for trepidation. In fact, most everyone knows a lawyer joke.

However, for many document destruction firms, visiting a law firm can be quite a lucrative endeavor. And, as the document destruction industry continues to grow, many of these shredding companies find law firms a great business source. Why?

Misconceptions about attorneys may abound, but it is hard to deny that attorneys typically consume a significant amount of paper. While storing cases and files extending back years may keep material out of the shredding cycle for several years, eventually this material needs to be disposed of. This is when many document destruction firms capitalize. Adding to the opportunities, the increased concern with identify theft and the legislative safeguards to protect against it has created a burgeoning demand for law firms to shred even their older files to prevent problems down the road.

A number of document destruction firms note that while law offices are subtly different from other industries when it comes to document destruction, for the most part legal firms abide by many of the same criteria as other industries.

In fact, according to several shredding service providers, some law firms’ approaches to document destruction are not as stringent as a layman would expect.

In fact, one document shredding company manager was very surprised at how unsophisticated some law offices that they service have been. While law offices have no hard and fast rules for how they operate, a number of shredding companies say that larger, quite often older law firms are more lax with their shredding procedures.

At the same time, smaller firms are often more diligent with ensuring a close working relationship with their security and document shredding service providers.

One of the biggest issues for shredding companies when they begin servicing a law office is what to shred.

Mark Grossman, a Florida attorney and chair of the Technology Law Group of the law firm Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., says that when to shred files is "when you are not aware of any regulated issues."

In an article written by Grossman, he notes that for corporations (including law firms) "you need to have a sensible document disposal regimen, which, among other things, avoids the destruction of e-mails and paper documents as soon as the possibility of litigation looms.

"Here’s the catch though," Grossman writes. "Routine document destruction will not avoid sanctions if it occurs after your duty to preserve information has arisen. This duty to preserve information requires that you suspend your routine destruction program with respect to relevant documents."

Mike Sweeney, an attorney with the law firm Brouse McDowell, in Akron, Ohio, says that shredding is a practice that the company does on a regular basis. The firm has a member of the staff witness the actual shredding. The company stipulates on-site destruction of the documents.

For many companies, the trade-off between using an on-site destruction service and an off-site shredding service boils down to cost versus confidentiality. Typically, an on-site shredding operation can cost quite a bit more than trucking the collected material to an off-site location where it is shredded.

However, for many law offices, the guarantee that the material is being shredded and not being left unattended is worth the additional cost they pay to have a company perform the shredding on the property.

Michele Moody, president of DocuGuides, an on-site shredding firm headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, focuses exclusively on on-site shredding. "It is so important," she stresses. "You can’t believe what I see."

But, she adds, the law firms that her company services are becoming very stringent. This is more apparent with the introduction of HIPAA legislation, as well as a raft of legislative initiatives that are mandating privacy issues.

"Most experts say shred, shred, shred," Moody adds. While her company has designed the shredding service to allow for someone from the law offices to witness the process, most do not do so, trusting her company to ensure the proper procedure.

What Moody says makes her operation stand out is that the shredding operation literally pulverizes the material, leaving an almost pulp-like end product. She notes that while her company is well liked by its clients, recyclers are less enamored of the product because it is more difficult to recycle.

Taking another approach, Chris Ockenfels, president of Document Destruction & Recycling Services, an Iowa-based shredding firm, says that a majority of his business with law firms ends up being off-site shredding.

The biggest reason, he notes, is that the company is AAA certified, a standard policy from the National Association of Information Destruction (NAID). When customers see this certification document, they trust that the company will abide by the requirements needed by the firm, says Ockenfels.

While most of his clients opt to have his firm take the material to their location where it is shredded, he says that the company is always open to allowing people from the law firm to view the process as an extra guarantee. However, few take the offer.

In fact, of all the companies that his shredding firm services, Ockenfels estimates that fewer than 5 percent take advantage of the on-site offer to witness the destruction of the material.

The main reason, he surmises, that most law firms choose off-site shredding as opposed to on-site shredding is the price difference. The cost between the two can be significant.

However, Tiffany O’Brien, with Progressive Recovery Inc., a Florida-based shredding firm, says that at the present time she estimates that it is a 50 percent/50 percent split between on-site and off-site.

One of the biggest difficulties with working with law offices is that there are no set-in-stone policies that they adhere to. While some attorneys set up a regular, routine file shredding procedure, other law offices end up having an occasional purging of the files. Some shredding companies note that some of their legal industry customers have gone back 20 or more years to have files purged.

While servicing a law firm when it is purging old files may be lucrative, often there is no set time when this is done; rather it happens whenever a law firm deems that older files are no longer relevant. This can throw a wrench into scheduled routes.

According to O’Brien, smaller law offices more likely opt to have an annual purging of documents.

Courthouses, because of the voluminous amount of fibrous material they generate, shred more frequently.

Most shredding company managers say that there are very few differences between servicing companies in the legal profession and serving those from other business sectors. Thus, operators should have few qualms about tapping into this market.

Confidential documents are abundant in law offices, just as they are in the medical and financial communities. Tom Caso, vice president and general manager of Shred-It, San Diego, says he doesn’t see a significant difference between servicing law offices and other businesses. "We tend to do a lot more purge work with law firms," he comments. "There seems to be more large box purges at law offices."

While law offices are using more electronic technology, most document destruction firms say that they aren’t necessarily seeing any significant jump in the amount of scanning and digitalizing of paperwork, which would result in more material being shredded once they are scanned into the system. "Most attorneys use hard copies (paper documents)," Caso adds.

Greg Miller, marketing manager for Tri-R Shredding, a division of Tri-R Recycling, a Denver, Colo., document destruction firm, notes that most of the law offices the company services are not much different from other industries that the company services.

One area of distinction is in the number of larger offices that use off-site storage for material. Larger law firms often use off-site locations such as those managed by Iron Mountain for storage. From these locations the companies will have an occasional purging procedure.

While price, timing and other factors all play a role in selling their services, the biggest selling point, most document destruction firms note, is the ability to ensure that the company meets all the confidentiality concerns that a law office may have.

The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) has a service that allows companies to demonstrate to potential customers that they meet the confidentiality standards. Called the AAA Certification, it demonstrates to customers, whether in the legal profession or in other industries, that the company has met a rigorous set of guidelines developed by the industry’s governing body.

This, Miller says, "gives the customer peace of mind." n

The author is senior editor and Internet editor for Secure Destruction Business. He can be contacted at dsandoval@ SDBmagazine.com.