Files and the Lawyer

Mark Rubin

Hey there! Yes, you. Lawyer? Client? (Both?) Doesn’t matter, for if you fall into either category, my words about files and storage matter.

When I started practicing law, 40 years ago this Friday, we had carbon paper, with Olivetti 351s on the near horizon. (A screen about three-eighths of an inch high and maybe three inches long, affording a typist a brief opportunity to correct a typo before the print hit the page.) And, everything that mattered got saved in a manila folder.

The firm with which I practiced from 1983 until 1999 had off-site storage, along with an interior room – Purgatory, to me – where we kept finished matters until the room