A legal practice now has the opportunity to keep in a digital form all information it creates and receives through information systems and networks. It is both practical, and good business sense, to archive client records digitally when today many of the other information processes associated with the delivery of legal services also occur digitally. The ability to store massive quantities of information in a digital form has created the technological need for affordable hardware devices and software applications to manage the generation, processing, manipulation, communication, tracking, archive, and retrieval of digital information. Digital storage is simply another medium for archiving information. The responsibilities, rules and regulations required of paper archives for client records apply, in most cases, equally to electronic archives.
Electronic archives do, however, deliver numerous advantages over paper-based archives.
With a sensible data security regime in place, for example, digital records can invariably be replaced if the original electronic records are destroyed by some catastrophe, such as a fire. Electronic archives do not have the physical and geographical barriers which often surround and isolate paper archives. Electronic archives can be accessible from anywhere, and available at anytime through computer networks. In seconds electronic archives can be searched, sifted, and filtered to identify and retrieve precisely the information being sought. A legal practice can over time build a large reservoir of reusable knowledge from electronically archived client records.