-- are based on legal, audit and operational requirements and are tied directly to the classification scheme.  Rather than indicating how long each document has to be retained, we develop a retention period for the entire file (budget, employee, etc.). Identifying the legal requirements is by far the most difficult part of developing retention schedules.  Looking at every possible law to determine whether or not it requires certain records to be retained could take many months. There are, however, commercial databases that specialize in records retention requirements. A Google search should result in a few hits to review. Remember, however, that determining the operational requirements for access to the information is just as important as the legal research.  You do not want to take away information before people are finished with it. E-Mails -- the management of emails is one of the biggest problems today in almost all corporations/organizations.  It is not unusual to find people with more than 1,000 emails in their Inbox or Sent Items folders.  We often get asked how long emails have to be retained. To be blunt, that is like asking how long MSWord or Excel documents have to be kept. The answer in all cases, including emails, is that it depends on the subject matter of the document.  Something dealing with a contract would obviously be kept longer than one announcing the company Christmas party.  There is no single retention for emails; they should be treated as any other type of corporate document --