Fiveminuteswith...

In the last issue of Managing Partner, Damian Griffiths of Addleshaw Goddard, argued that e-mail management has become a major challenge of the law-firm IT department. Daniel Pollick, IT Director at DLA, takes up the debate in this issue, explaining to Caroline Poynton how he has addressed the issue within his firm.

1. In your view, what are the pros and cons of using e-mail in the modern law firm?

In favour of the e-mail system, it has speed, ease of use, informality and everybody uses it. However, the advantages also present risks, as they all increase pressure on client service. For example, in the old days, a letter arriving on Monday was often not answered until Friday. Today, an e-mail that arrives at 9:45am will probably be followed up by a chasing phone call at lunchtime. Informality creates the risk of incautious or ill-thought-through advice, and the volume of e-mail creates a huge filing and compliance problem.

2. In an international firm such as DLA, how do you manage the sheer volume of e-mail that must be exchanged both internally and externally?

Apart from investing in a solid e-mail platform, we have implemented e-mail-archiving technology and are also about to go live with e-mail-management software that allows e-mails to be filed against the matter – just like documents in a document-management system.

3. Do you have any security concerns in your use of e-mail and how have you gone about addressing them?

Of course, and we have all the usual precautions in place, including the use of an outsourced e-mail-scanning service. Oddly, the privacy risks of e-mail (that is, e-mail isn’t private) are largely ignored by the legal sector and accepted as a fact of life. This is possibly because it is practically no different to placing paper in an envelope and then putting it in a post box; that isn’t secure either, but we are all happy to take the risk.

4. What about personal use of e-mail – has that been a problem in your firm and how have you gone about controlling it?

Our policy prohibits personal e-mail use. We know the policy is broken, but as long as use is moderate, we are comfortable. There is no more risk of people passing personal e-mails off as firm e-mails as there is of them making inappropriate use of the firm letterhead.

5. Are there any other areas of concern that you are currently addressing in your e-mail management?

All the technologies for e-mail management are very ‘version 1.0’. We are at the beginning of a long process (perhaps 10-20 years) of working out how to manage e-mail: its risks, document retention/destruction and compliance issues, and how to convert e-mail from its beginnings as a completely individualistic tool designed to send and receive messages, to its future as a corporate repository, document-transport mechanism and team-working tool.

6. Do you think other firms are taking e-mail management seriously enough?

I don't know, but I do know that we are all facing the same issues with the same lack of ready answers.

7. What risks do they take by not addressing e-mail concerns now?

Many, ranging from system issues like running out of space or system collapse, through to serious smoking-gun type risks of compliance failure.

Daniel Pollick is IT director at DLA. He can be contacted at: daniel.pollick@dla.com.