Legal Storage
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Boy I hate to suggest this. I'm not too fond of lawyers and avoid them when possible. Despite the fact I liked Chris, who worked with us here at SQLServerCentral.com on a couple things, I hated having to talk on the phone about legal matters. They're just unpleasant and more complicated than I think they need to be. But that's my opinion. I'm just glad no one in my family is a lawyer.
But as database people, we know something about storage. We've dealt with archiving, tracking documents, etc. And since most document management systems use some type of database, if you need a new job, maybe you can o help a lawyer. They're having storage issues, mostly from email, and many firms are trying to figure out how to handle the problem.
Personally I'm not sure what the problem is; they're well paid, pay some IT guy to manage the storage.
But regardless, I can see some DBAs that have sysadmin skills getting into the document managing game with a law firm or two and helping them to keep track of all the information they have. After all, emails are just information and keeping track of all that information is something us data guys are good at.
It seems storage is always a problem to manage. Business people don't want to have to decide what to keep and what to throw away. They don't want limits. They don't want to have to file things. I get that. People work differently and I don't expect the top salesperson or the CFO to spend time cleaning out their mailbox. I'd rather have them spend time doing what they do best.
As IT people, I think we need to work around them, developing archival, aging, and other mechanisms to better deal with the storage of data and cleaning it from systems without requiring the end user to understand what's going on. I predict we'll see HSM systems coming back into vogue as solutions to the tremendous amount of data we're having to keep track of over time. Especially as regulatory requirements continue to increase our need to provide proof and auditing of actions.
As you grow your skills in SQL Server 2005, you might want to spend a little extra time on the encryption and partitioning features. These might come in handy with future jobs, even outside of database work.
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Have a friend that supported a law office part time. It was utter chaos. The users weren't trained and kept downloading viruses and surfing sights they probably shouldn't have. To make matters worse, the owners wouldn't free up the funds necessary to upgrade equipment and software, and they definitely needed some strategy for document backup/recovery. The worst part of all? They were always at least a month late paying him. Seemed like they hated to spend their own money but sure didn't mind billing 100's per hour for their services.
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Interesting thread from the document storage perspective...
I have worked on several "solutions" to document storage and found that most were just to complex for the end user(that's the person that created the document and has a need to keep it for later use...). The most successful were custom applications that handled a specific need.
From my perspective, the larger the scope, the greater the risk of failure. Keep your document storage issues well defined and make interfaces that are easy to use.
I've been involved with more than one large corporate document storage system that was going to solve all the different business units needs and they simply FAILED!
Good luck kids, and don't hurt yourself with this one...
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Ahh... poetic justice... that the attorneys are drowning in the very flood of data that our onerous legal / regulatory environment has created.
On the tech side -
We have looked into an email archiving product from EMC/Legato called EmailXtender that is supposed to eliminate redundant data and index it all somehow for later retrieval.
I also work quite a bit with our document imaging dept. I agree that the major challenge is getting the users to properly classify the docs. We have developed a pretty good process for imaging our loan documents. As previously noted, it has a well defined scope and is very customized.
We recently kicked tires with IBM and Documentum looking at a grandiose enterprise level CM system. The implementation $$'s quickly rose into the stratosphere. We didn't go forward with it. I'm glad, because I was pretty sure it was a train wreck in the making.
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I have done a few side contracts for law firms relating to their DMSs. I also know a few folks who are active in this field. ezann's comment about ' poetic justice' is very appropriate. Here are a few more observations that I have.
SET BRUTAL_HONESTY_MODE ON
Information Services is looked upon as a cost center - still ! Typically, the head of the IT area is somebody who knows somebody who is a managing partner or someone who heads up the hiring comittee. This sounds a bit like the 'good ole boys club' - it is. The staff seldom are compensated at prevailing market rates so they get what they pay for. This information comes from working around the IT sector with contacts in the legal area - both IT and non-IT. I also have first hand experience in interviewing at a few of the major players in the Chicago market over my career. Each and every time salary was low-balled anywhere from 20-40% of the immediate prevailing market. Needless to say I used these firms as interview experience. Since the leadership and the staff at a lot of law firms are not up to par why do they think that thier infrastructure, hardware and software are up to par. Their Information Systems and al associated are a situation that the legal community has made for itself. Until they wake up and smell the coffee things will only get worse.
SET BRUTAL_HONESTY_MODE OFF
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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Rudy hit the nail on the head with his first sentence - IT is viewed as a cost center. In organizations that do not make money from their IT folks (which includes any company not selling software or IT services in some form), IT costs are percieved as akin to maintenance and janitorial expenses - they are necessary evils but don't necessarily contribute to the bottom line. What many of these non-IT companies fail to realize is by spending as little as possible on IT/IS infrastructure and staff, they will almost always pay for it - several times over - in rehiring/retraining costs, lost efficiency, system downtime, or even security breaches.
Tim Mitchell, Microsoft Data Platform MVP
Data Warehouse and ETL Consultant
TimMitchell.net | @Tim_Mitchell | Tyleris.com
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