In the digital age, the average business produces volumes of information, from numerous document drafts to databases, to emails, text messages, and chats. Whether in electronic or paper form, your company is almost constantly producing information.
The question then becomes, what do you do with that information? Do you have a specific document retention and destruction policy? If not, consider the following reasons that you should:
- Having a policy can protect you against accusations that you purposely destroyed evidence;
- A policy can protect your company’s confidential information;
- A policy can prevent confusion when multiple drafts of a document exist.
Even if you have a policy that applies to day-to-day operations, what happens when conflict arises? As soon as you reasonably anticipate litigation, the law requires you to stop any pre-existing policies and retain all records that could be relevant to the case. This may occur before you decide to involve legal counsel, so it is important for your company to know the warning signs of litigation, and what to do when those signs appear.
Without a document retention and destruction policy, your company’s records could quickly get out of hand, allowing inadvertent destruction of important materials or disclosure of confidential information. Additionally, if it does not retain documents when litigation looms, your company could face serious sanctions. To talk to an attorney about how you can protect your information in the digital age, call Northwest Business Law Group today.