Undeniably, the law has much to say with how long a company must retain records, when they can destroy them, and how they may be stored. That those laws and regulations exist, however, should not dump records retention in the lap of the law department.
As with compliance, where lawyers need to interpret the requirements of the law, the nitty gritty responsibility for storing and destroying documents belongs properly elsewhere in a company. So too does training on document retention practices. (See my post of Dec. 20, 2005 on lawyers’ supporting role with crisis management and my post of March 18, 2005 on whether the law department should manage contracts.)