Records Management as Stand-Up Comedy

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Records Management as Stand-Up Comedy
Evan Koblentz ContactAll Articles
Law Technology NewsOctober 18, 2011

Records management in the legal field isn't the most glamorous career choice. So it was a surprise to hear some very creative comments Sunday at the Legal Information Technology Conference, part of the wider ARMA conference in Washington, D.C. -- comments that kept this relatively dry subject pleasantly entertaining. A sampling of comments that kept legal records managers laughing follows.

Angela Akpapunam, director of document lifecycle services at WilmerHale, noted that some senior lawyers in her firm still refer to records management as "central files" and that one person misunderstood the term "document lifecycle" to be "document lifestyle."

Bryn Bowen, director of records information management at Greenberg Traurig, on establishing information governance in large firms: "We are sort of changing the tires while moving the truck."

Stacie Capshaw, associate director of records management at Kirkland & Ellis, said she was able to accomplish records management because her firm is "a loose federation of entrepreneurs."

Terrence Coan, senior director at Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, said information governance can range from "pretty crappy to really awesome."

Rudy Moliere, director of information governance and records management at White & Case, observed that records management is "not at all like herding cats -- you can see cats."

Moliere again, asked by an audience member to explain how predictive email filtering works: "Elves."

Sarah Stephens, chief knowledge officer at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, on software vendors Recommind and Autonomy: "We had Recommind come in the morning and Automony in the afternoon. We said we wanted to do A, B, and C, and frankly Recommind said, "Oh yeah, we can do that." Autonomy said, "Gosh, nobody's ever asked us that before, but I suppose we could figure it out."

But it was Richard Kotwa, director of client information and records compliance, also of Sutherland, who had line and after line to keep his audience smiling:

On hosted enterprise content management: "The cloud is scary. It's more likely to rain than anything else."

On microfiche: "I'm sure one day you'll be able to sell that stuff for a ton of money on eBay."

On document management systems: "Why is the DMS not popular? I think it's the structure. Attorneys are like cats. I'm an attorney so I can say that. You try to do something new and they run the other direction."

Still on document management systems: "It's a needle in a haystack. Content management allows you to at least pick the quadrant of the haystack to look in."

On knowledge management: "Knowledge management is like content management on steroids. But they aren't very good steroids."

On the IT staff: "You know how technical people are. They hide in the basement and nobody wants to go down there because it's a scary place."

On disaster recovery related to a snowstorm effecting his Atlanta office: "We shut down the town for a week and our disaster recovery plan was 'wait for sunshine'."

On his past life sorting document boxes: "I knew what was in 65 percent of them. The others were Christmas presents."

Evan Koblentz is a reporter for Law Technology News. Send e-mail.