Understanding the Benefits and Requirements of Legal Document Shredding
When it comes to Legal Document Shredding, each industry has its own rules and regulations. However, there is some uniformity that requires appropriate and reasonable measures to be taken to protect certain personal and confidential information from misuse, loss or theft. These rules are reinforced every time a case involving the destruction of legal records comes up.
For instance, in most industries, legal documents that contain personal information which is no longer needed to fulfill any of the client’s goals has to be erased, destroyed and must be made anonymous. All law firms are obliged to develop certain document destruction guidelines and implement those procedures to govern the destruction of all kinds of personal information.
Proper care must be taken when disposing of and destroying the personal information of the clients to keep unauthorized parties from gaining access to such information.
Standards of Destruction for Legal Professionals
After a number of cases of data breach have started to arise, people realize the need of establishing a standard with regards to the destruction of electronic as well as physical records. So, when it comes to Legal Document Shredding, destruction means cross-shredding all the papers and not just continuous shredding which can be recovered and reconstructed. Electronic records need to be completely destroyed in a professional manner with a certificate of destruction.
Best Practices That Need to Be Followed When Destroying Legal Documents
There are certain practices that have to be taken into account when destroying legal documents. Here is a list of those best practices:
Duplicates of legal records that contain confidential information should be stamped with warnings like “do not copy” and “shred after”. Be selective and check the references of the shredding company you hire. When hiring a document destruction company, you need to check whether they are members of certain associations like the National Association of Information Destruction (NAID) and that they are willing to maintain the principles of such associations when carrying out their job. You must make sure that your document destruction company delivers a certificate of destruction that includes the time, date, location and the method employed for destruction and the signature of the operator.
Destroying legal records is not only essential as per the law, but it is also the duty of law firms to protect the confidential information of their clients. Legal professionals must undertake this task with full honesty and integrity. By hiring ShredGreen, Inc. to destroy sensitive client documents, you ensure that your clients’ information is disposed of in an ethical and secure manner.
