TLOMA Today

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This is my last message to you as President of TLOMA. I want to thank the association for providing me this opportunity to learn, grow, and support our incredible community. As a member of your board, I am grateful to our administrative team for their effort and guidance, the other board members for their time and commitment, and to former board members who provided guidance as we dealt with some significant changes at TLOMA.  Thank you!

The TLOMA annual general meeting will be held later in February which will result in changing roles for many of us. Your new board is strong, and I believe your new President, Brigitte Mulder, and the TLOMA 2023 board will do an excellent job. TLOMA is in a strong position today as we look to broaden our geography, expand our offerings, and support our members.

We are working on several exciting in-person and virtual SIGs, planning for our annual spring Professional Development Day event is well underway, along with a number of social events including the golf tournament on June 21.  I hope to see many of you in person!

We are encouraged by a significant number of new and renewing members for 2023. If you haven’t renewed your membership, I encourage you to do so.

Our surveys provider, Normandin Beaudry will be presenting TLOMA’s 2023 Compensation surveys.

As always, our main objective is to offer participants a seamless experience, while providing high quality and reliable market data. Register to this event to gain a more detailed understanding of:

• What’s new for the 2023 survey edition
• The survey participation process
• Job matching tips and tricks
• Key dates and timelines

In the meantime, for more information on pricing, please click here or contact Normandin Beaudry directly at tloma@nbac.ca.

As always, we encourage firms with additional questions related to the participation process, survey content or broader compensation advisory support to reach out to Normandin Beaudry directly at tloma@nbac.ca and we would be happy to discuss in greater detail.

As more law firms transition to electronic and cloud-based document management, it’s emerging that alarmingly few are handling electronic data minimization well, despite the potentially dire consequences. Here Kandace Donovan explains why firms should prioritize a data minimization strategy to reduce cost, risk and protect data & system performance.

There are several data challenges in today’s world that law firms should be aggressively tackling. One is the exponential increase in data volume. By 2025 it is forecast there will be 200 zettabytes of data in the world.[1] That’s an awful lot of information to store and protect. Within law firms, at a minimum, excess data contributes to increased risk, sluggish systems, impaired productivity and high data storage / migration costs.  

A growing cyberthreat

As well, there’s a growing incidence of cybercrime targeting law firms to steal their data and/or extort a ransom. ABA’s 2021 cybersecurity report identified ransomware as “An increasing threat to attorneys and law firms of all sizes”.[2] In 2021 business, financial and professional services (including law firms) were the top industries for cyberattacks.[3] In the same year, Microsoft revealed that state-sponsored Chinese hackers were targeting “US-based universities, defense contractors, law firms and infectious disease researchers”.[4] It’s probably not a list you expected to be on today, but cybercriminals know that law firms make for rich pickings. Data minimization matters here because the fatter the goose – i.e. the more data you hold – the more attractive you become, and the more effort cybercriminals will put into breaching your defenses.

Comply or be fined

With the likelihood of the new Canadian Privacy Bill C-27 being passed this year firms will have yet another set of privacy rules and regulations to wade through. The premise of current and proposed privacy legislation in Canada requires that personally identifiable information (PII) is held for a limited period, meaning to be compliant firms need to continually purge their PII data or run the risk of large fines and reputational damage.  

There’s also a growing need to comply with client Outside Counsel Guidelines (“OCG”) – some of which will mandate how and for how long client data is held. Some clients – particularly big corporates – are setting their own “gold standards” for data management that go beyond existing or anticipated legislation, and which will be passed on in OCGs. Firms also need to maintain compliance with professional standards in relation to how client data is handled and secured and for how long.

The big issue for firms

The trouble is that, overall, law firms aren’t doing data minimization well. Best practice is a data retention policy, realized via a data retention schedule, that’s enabled by procedures and systems, and backed by controls and oversight. Yet only just over half (53%) of the respondents to the ABA’s 2021 cybersecurity survey said their firm even had a policy to manage data retention.[5]

Moreover, even where a policy exists, it’s often not enforced. A poll conducted during a recent LegalRM webinar suggested only 26% of firms with policies were implementing them.

It’s also the case that even when a data retention policy and schedule are being implemented, the agreed schedule often isn’t being applied to the firm’s electronic records. LegalRM recently worked with a mid-sized firm and discovered that more than half of its DMS-based records were overdue for destruction. That’s a considerable amount of excess data exposing the firm to unnecessary costs and risks. Nor did this consider all the other possible data repositories, including File Share, OneDrive, SharePoint, HR database, and the firm’s practice or case management systems.

What firms should do now

Be proactive. Understand your firm’s data retention policy (and how it applies to both physical and digital records, across all repositories) and fully understand the potential limitations of the systems and processes currently in place. Then a firmwide data minimization project needs to be coordinated.

Stakeholders at all levels must be engaged. A data minimization strategy is not just beneficial to the records management or governance teams; it should be of interest to those at the most senior levels of the firm, including the CIO, CISO, COO, and General Counsel. Whilst those in these roles may not be responsible for data strategy, the fallout from a security breach and/or the bill for excess storage can still land at their door. And the costs can be steep. Data breaches incur lost productivity and possibly ransom payments, cybercrime expert fees, regulatory and professional fines, and even client and past employee lawsuits. The reputational hit impacts client retention and acquisition and future rates and fees. In addition, if your firm is considering the move to a cloud based DMS reducing the quantity of data will reduce the duration, fees and ongoing costs of the transition.

To find out more about how to instigate a data and data policy review join us for our upcoming webinar. We will discuss the advantages of a data minimization strategy, and in particular focus on why this strategy is of particular importance to a CIO, or the IT budget holder within a firm. To register, click here.   

It was October 2021 when I saw the posting for an Executive Director role with the Law Office Management Association.  I contacted Joncarlo Barrios at Forge Recruitment to get more information on the position.

Fast forward to January 5^th, 2022 and I was starting my first day as the Executive Director of TLOMA.

It was a first day like no other in my non-profit executive career.  In the past, I’ve traveled to a new office at a new location, figuring out the best commute route, finding parking, then grabbing an elevator to a floor.  This time, I simply made my way down to my basement and logged in.

A few weeks earlier I received a box with my ‘office’- laptop, monitor, printer and set up shop.  In many ways it is like jumping on a moving train because once January arrived, things started to roll.

January saw my first Board meeting, then in February the official transfer meeting where the newly elected Board members assumed their roles, and the departing Board members said their goodbyes.  All very official and all very virtual.

It wasn’t long before I was working on my first ‘event’; a Spring Networking event, except it wouldn’t be in-person.  My first encounter with TLOMA members was the virtual Family Feud Night in February.

My first ‘live’ event was the Professional Development Day at Cineplex with the Southern Group in June.  Here I was nervously awaiting my first in-person interaction with TLOMA members – greeting them as they arrived and directing them to where the event was taking place.

It was a great experience, everyone I met was friendly and engaging.  I got a real sense of the character of TLOMA that morning; a group of people who enjoy each other’s company and are willing to help each other when they can.

Not long after that we were on the links and the TLOMA Golf Tournament where I was able to meet many of TLOMA’s Business Partners and properly introduce myself (special note: mark June 21,2023 in your calendars for this year’s golf tournament).

August saw the first in-person social event, as TLOMA members gathered at The Ballroom to test our bowling skills.  A great event with over 30 people in attendance and 5 teams duking it out, having fun and connecting.

Interspersed throughout all of this were the SIG events, where I quickly became familiar with cybersecurity, hybrid work environments, staff retention challenges, and digitizing case files.  Plans for 2023 call for a return to in-person SIG events with 8 planned for the year.

The big event every year is the TLOMA Annual Conference and Trade Show, which was returning to in-person in 2022.  The last in-person conference was in 2019.  This was something I was able to quickly have an impact on; having organized conferences in the past.

Working with a dedicated and enthusiastic Conference Committee we put together a great event highlighted by our 2 keynote speakers; Dr. Lisa Belanger, Shawn Shepheard and the most popular speaker of the event, comedienne Kate Davis.

This was an ideal venue for me to meet a wide range of members and Business Partners. And working alongside our Conference Chair Colleen McHugh as co-hosts of the Delegate/Business Partner Dinner put me front and centre with the members.

Big plans for 2023 in Ottawa, so hope to see many of you there.

I also completed my first Compensation Survey cycle. Working with an engaged service provider in Normandin Beaudry, and a passionate group of compensation professionals on the Compensation Committee was an enlightening experience that’s generated some exciting ideas for 2023.

Ideas that will give the survey a higher profile and increase awareness of its value for TLOMA members.

The year came to an end with the annual Holiday Networking Event, which was postponed in 2021 due to COVID.  But returned with a fine meal and social time at Biaggio’s.

And that was my first year at TLOMA, although it didn’t feel like a year has passed.  Harvard Business School estimates it takes an executive one year to fully understand the organization they take over.  I would concur and extend a thank you to the Board and Karen Gerhardt in showing me the ropes.

You don’t always have to move to the latest and greatest technology

I wrote an article in 2022 about helping your team with technology transitions. Sometimes change is important, especially if data security is at risk. As I also mentioned then, however, you don’t have to change just because there is something new out there. Sometimes it makes sense to use older technology if it works for you.

The most important thing about using office technology is figuring out how it can make your work life easier and/or improve the quality of your work. It should make sense for the firm, from a business perspective.

But the amount of information there is about new technology can be overwhelming. You may be hearing that you need to switch to a new version of PCLaw, for instance, or work out of browsers all the time.

What if you like how you work – but you also want to make sure that your software can still run securely and affordably?

Enter virtual desktops

There is a middle ground between sticking with clunky software that’s in bad shape and switching your whole team over to something new.

A virtual desktop is like a computer within a computer. It’s where you log in and do all your work. Instead of all your files and software living on your physical computer or a server in your office, they are on a private cloud in a data centre. This keeps costs manageable and is more secure. It also makes remote work easier for those times you are moving in between home, the office, and travel.

Your team will need to learn how to click on the virtual desktop icon and enter their login and password, but once they’re in, all their software will look the same as always.

Virtual desktop providers can give older software a much longer shelf life because they move the software you own to a secure cloud space in a data centre. There is no longer a need to maintain or replace physical servers in your office. An added benefit is that virtual desktops can run on older computers and laptops, so you don’t have to replace those as often.

What to look for in a virtual desktop system

Virtual desktops are rising in popularity. However, they are sometimes undersold based on performance, so make sure you're getting fast enough servers from cloud providers.

Here’s what to look for in a virtual desktop system:

• Server speed
• Whether your servers will be shut down at any point in the day
• How many server reboots there will be weekly
• Public or private cloud? Public is best for extreme compliance requirements. For offices with fewer than 150 employees, private cloud will be simpler and more performant.

Learning more

To register for my February 22 webinar on this topic, head to our website at www.inderly.com. If you register, following the webinar I will also send you a short recap and presentation slides. Our webinars are accredited for Professionalism Hours by the Law Society of Ontario.