Confidential Papers That Your Columbus Law Firm Should Shred

Professionals in the legal field understand that your Columbus, Ohio law firm has plenty of details to keep organized to make sure that your firm runs efficiently and professionally. The secure shredding of your documents is just one aspect of your firm’s business that must be done correctly. Shredding your documents is just as important to your law firm as it is for hospitals, doctors’ offices, other small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies. That is because there are important laws and regulations that dictate the proper disposal of old documents. Your law firm deals with confidential client information on a daily basis, therefore, you are also required to protect it.

Create a Document Destruction Policy

Law firms should have a document destruction program in place for every employee to follow. The best policy dictates that all discarded papers are shred. A “shred everything” policy is the best way to protect your firm’s liability, because when a business shreds all papers, you eliminate the risk of any one employee making a careless decision regarding what should, or should not, be shred. There is enormous liability in not properly disposing of discarded papers for any business. It is a risk that is easy to avoid with the right shredding service provider and program in place.

Whether your law firm produces documents consistently and requires regularly scheduled shredding, or chooses to coordinate large box or file cleanouts only on occasion, consider hiring Royal Document Destruction. Our Columbus, Ohio professional shredding company follows the strictest guidelines established by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) for secure document destruction. This means we guarantee the security your central Ohio law firm needs and we meet or exceed all legal requirements for secure shredding. Royal Document Destruction’s services include box pick-ups of any size, on-site shredding with our mobile truck at your firm, off-site pick-up shredding at one of our highly secure facilities in Columbus or Cincinnati, hard-drive destruction, product destruction and more.

What Needs to be Shred

Here are some examples of what needs to be shred, and why Royal Document Destruction suggests a “shred everything” policy for law firms:

  • All correspondence between attorneys and client
  • Correspondence between attorneys and other attorneys
  • Law firm banking statements
  • Opinion letters
  • Police reports
  • Factual summaries
  • Witness statements
  • Financial Information regarding your client
  • Billing and personal information for all clients
  • Time log records or past clients’ total hours
  • Outdated tax records or income records
  • Voided or cancelled checks and out-of-date bank statements or correspondence

In addition, Federal mandates like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act,(GLBA), FACTA, HIPAA, and the Federal Trade Commission Act require businesses of all kinds to provide reasonable security for sensitive information. These rules often fall under the scope of work done by legal professionals.

  • Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA) act is a federal law requiring financial institutions, including law firms, that handle financial information, to implement safeguards for client information, including proper document shredding.
  • FACTA (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act), protects the clients’ right to privacy and was added primarily to protect consumers from identity theft. The act establishes requirements for information privacy, accuracy, and proper disposal; it also limits the ways consumer information can be shared.
  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a federal mandate that all businesses- including law firms- handling protected health information (PHI), must have proper data security measure in place, including secure document shredding.

Proper document shredding is a crucial aspect of any Columbus law firms’ data security. By following this best business practice and hiring a professional shredding company such as Royal Document Destruction, your Columbus law firm can ensure the secure destruction of all of your sensitive documents is done correctly every time.

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