Client files - what can you ethically discard?

From paper to kilobytes—updated

By Peter H. Geraghty
Director, ETHICSearch

You are a new associate in a medium sized 50-year-old law firm that has accumulated thousands of client files, most of which are closed or dormant. The cost of storing these files has become prohibitive.

As the new lawyer in the firm whom everyone looks to as being presumptively up to date with current technology, you've been asked to formulate a firm policy about what items in the client files can be transferred to an electronic format, and once the transfer has been made, which items in the files can be discarded. As you begin to think through this process, you realize that even if you do make such a transfer, there will still be some items in individual client files that should not be discarded.

What legal ethics issues should you keep in mind as you formulate this new firm policy?

Read this ABA Journal article to find the answers

http://www.abanet.org/media/youraba/200802/article11.html