Records created by other types of businesses belong to that company. Most records created by a lawyer in the practice of law belong to the client. While the records are in the lawyer's possession, the lawyer has a fiduciary and custodial responsibility to preserve and protect the client's property, which may include the client's records. Second, unlike most other businesses where information is stored primarily in fields in databases, which is referred to as structured information, law firm information resides mostly in documents created by word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation, multimedia or other applications. This kind of information is called unstructured information.
Unstructured information is harder to organize.
In fact, document-management applications were developed primarily to help law firms place structure on unstructured information. Finally, the law is very subjective. No two lawyers will interpret the same law the same way, nor will a lawyer apply the same law in exactly the same way for two different clients. Therefore, the information in the practice of law cannot be organized and filed in the same way as, say, patient medical information. Common Problems in Programs Equipment and supplies.