IGHS25 - Chuck Barth, Sheppard Mullin

Jim Merrifield (00:01.198)
Well hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Chuck Barth at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. Welcome Chuck.

Chuck Barth (00:04.314)
Thank you.

Chuck Barth (00:10.286)
Well, thank you. Great to be here.

Jim Merrifield (00:12.458)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat and you to take some time out of your busy day to get us, to help us to know Chuck Barth and what you've been doing in the industry. I know you've been very busy. So let's kick it off here. Can you tell us a brief introduction of your role, how long you've been with Sheppard Mullin and one fun fact about yourself?

Chuck Barth (00:35.07)
Sure. I joined the Shepherd Mullin of just about three years ago as the Director of Information Governance. So it's been a wonderful experience bringing some exciting opportunities with information governance to the firm here and looking for many more. Fun fact is I'm also a musician and my main focus is on electric guitar. I like to play all sorts of different styles, some blues, jazz.

But my heart will always remain with some good loud rock and roll.

Jim Merrifield (01:08.05)
That's awesome. Musician. So we have a IG musician in the house. That's awesome. Well, I know you have tons of experience. You even have a musician. And I know you've also been involved with a group, LFIGS, the Law Firm Information Governance Symposium. I know you've been a member of that group and also a member of the steering committee for the last year or so, right? A couple of years.

Chuck Barth (01:12.611)
Yes.

Chuck Barth (01:35.574)
Yes.

Jim Merrifield (01:36.962)
Perfect. Can you give us some insight into the nature of LFIGS and your involvement with the group?

Chuck Barth (01:42.618)
Certainly. I've been with the group maybe about five years now and a member of the steering committee for approximately three years. The symposium was founded around 2012 and Iron Mountain has been the sponsor from the very beginning. And they've been a wonderful partner. They've been able to provide a lot of

sponsorship for the group, you know, facilitating our yearly symposiums and meetings and web spaces on their website for our papers and just allowing people from the industry to kind of build this platform for the legal industry to build this and provide IG roadmaps for law firms.

And over these last 10 years, you know, IG has been very much raised to the forefront in the legal field and evolved and elevated much beyond general records management, especially with the continuous evolution of electronic data and repositories. With our group, you know, it's all people involved with information governance. All participants have been, you know,

involved with information governance or records management for many years. We have a five-member steering committee whose members are from various law firms and we help and guide the mission and direction of this symposium.

Jim Merrifield (03:16.866)
That's great. And you know, thank you for your work with that. I mean we get to collaborate together I've been a member of LFIGS for I don't know several years and you know Thank you for taking the lead on that and coming up with the topics and it's been it's been a really fun ride So speaking of topics, what are some of the main topics at the group? Focuses on in their content. Let's just say Let's talk about previous years and then maybe this year

Chuck Barth (03:43.526)
Sure. We do try to bring currently relevant topics that are meaningful to not only other IG professionals like you and I, to help build that knowledge base, but also expand the audience beyond IG to firm executives in IT.

general counsel and administration to show the value of good information governance and the benefits that can be made for the firm and the data hygiene. Some of our recent topics from the past year was very exciting because they were like right on top of what was needed. We had an IG perspective on data governance in law firms. So kind of a difference, you know.

information governance and data governance comparison and discussion. We also had an updated look at matter mobility and what that means, you know, with the sheer volume of firms kind of trading matters back and forth with all kinds of complexities with tools and information. We did write an updated paper to take a look at

new options with matter of mobility and what to think of. We also had a just-in-time paper for generative AI and law firm information governance. That was probably around mid-year last year. Things had really kind of taken notice. We got a great group of people together and got that paper out.

We also had a topic on you have an IG policy, now what? This was also featured at 2023 ILTACon and ARMA conferences as well. Kind of going beyond what policies do. It's like, well, what do you do after that policy? How do you maintain compliance with it and track things? So topics we're working on for this year.

Chuck Barth (05:57.238)
We're currently working with our teams, with participants in the symposium. We're going to be taking a deeper dive into AI with law firm information governance. Our paper this past year was very quick, but this is going to be taking a deeper dive. We have some great professionals working on this and they're really going to deliver a wonderful paper, an informative paper on AI by IG

We're also going to take a look at evolving roles in information governance. You know, a lot of things have evolved much past, you know, standard records management. And we have all different electronic tools that we use now in different repositories. And, you know, there's different skill levels needed for what's considered information governance. So we're going to be taking a look at these evolving roles.

And we're also going to take a look at retention for the 21st century, taking a look at what's needed and the different types of information, both administrative and client, and give new ideas at how to best manage the retention at our law firms.

Jim Merrifield (07:13.726)
No, that's great. You got tons of topics there, right? AI obviously is a hot topic these days. You mentioned matter mobility. I think only us in the law firm world understand what matter mobility is, right? We try to talk to our clients about matter mobility. They're like, well, listen, I'm just going to send you this data if you want to call it matter mobility and moving matters between your two firms, that's on you. But...

Chuck Barth (07:28.24)
Yes.

Chuck Barth (07:39.642)
Right.

Jim Merrifield (07:40.918)
But yeah, I mean, that's great. So you got a slew of topics in the past and also for 2024, that's great. So you mentioned a symposium and you mentioned groups meeting to kind of collaborate. How does that work? How frequently do you guys meet to discuss these topics as a group and maybe as subcommittees?

Chuck Barth (08:02.018)
Okay, well our steering committee meets monthly just to help kind of guide the whole symposium and you know making sure that you know there's progress on papers and talking about next steps you know what we want to do you know for that year and the next planning for the symposium. The whole symposium participant meets quarterly. So we have.

Quarterly all hands meetings where we get together as a group and talk about the papers and topics that we're working on. People give, you know, brief presentations and papers get assigned and the topics. Participants, we pick team leaders from the participants. So our team leaders will talk about where they're at with their paper and bounce ideas off each other of the direction and content of these papers.

We do try to meet annually as a whole participant symposium, where we get together and talk about planning for the next year, where we're at with our current papers. Iron Mountain, again, is a wonderful sponsor and provides us great locations and meeting places to go to and host these events. It's a wonderful thing to be able to interact with all of our...

Patriots and information governance and a lot of networking and idea sharing. Idea sharing is the big focus of those symposiums. That is how we gather our ideas and get our papers really to gel together.

Jim Merrifield (09:48.938)
That's great. Oh, go ahead, sorry, I cut you off.

Chuck Barth (09:51.754)
Other than our paper teams meet as often as necessary. You know, that's not throughout the whole year. It just depends on how long it takes our groups to put the papers together. They may meet weekly. Every other week, you know, people have assignments and the team leaders bring the team together to talk about and get these papers jelled together.

Jim Merrifield (10:14.83)
That's great. It seems like a lot of work goes into these papers, to be produced. And it seems like too, when you meet as a group, I know I've been to a few of them, right? It's almost like a think tank, right? We're all kind of getting together and sharing ideas and things like that. And that's how we learn, right? From each other. So that's awesome, Chuck. Thanks for sharing a little insights into how the group works and all the time and effort that goes into creating these papers and ideas and collaboration. So.

Chuck Barth (10:26.126)
Yeah.

Jim Merrifield (10:43.978)
Let's talk about this group. So who's eligible to join the group, and what's the process for someone interested in joining?

Chuck Barth (10:52.614)
Oh, sure. Well, what we're really looking for is experienced legal industry IG leaders. So someone who's been around the block and has had different experiences, could be at one firm, could be at a multitude of different firms, but someone who has real world experience working with information governance and able to articulate their experience and provide

that knowledge sharing and experience to contribute to our community papers. Because that's what our bread and butter is for this. It's getting together knowledge sharing, experience sharing, and consolidating that into these papers for the greater information governance industry and community. So we're looking for people that are willing to...

Take the time to share their knowledge and being able to you know, right well And share ideas on paper Iron Mountain does host a law firm information governance symposium site On iron mountain comm and I think afterwards a link can be shared All of our papers are listed there by year so that it's great reading material to look for there's also and

application that you can fill out and submit as well. We do ask that, you know, if you do happen to know a member of the LFIGS community that they sponsor you as well. But we do accept any application and we'll review that with our Steering Committee.

Jim Merrifield (12:41.206)
makes sense. So it seems like if you join LFIGS you got to be ready to work, right? It's not a sit back and relax and let all the information flow and no benefit, you know, all the benefits come to the person and no benefits are given out. It's kind of a give-take, right?

Chuck Barth (12:57.638)
Correct. It's, you know, we like to think of it as participants, not members. You know, it's not a country club membership. You know, it's participative. If you're going to join, we would really want you to contribute your knowledge and experience.

Jim Merrifield (13:15.338)
Yeah, no, that only makes sense. So how do you envision this group evolving in the coming years? I'm sure, even since I've been participating, I mean, it's not just director of IG. There's, I think CIO is part of the group. There's some knowledge workers that are part of the group. How do you see this group evolving in the coming years, especially having to deal with like topics like AI, right? You're probably bringing in.

more technical experts with expertise, right?

Chuck Barth (13:47.034)
Yeah, our main focus will always be putting together relevant papers, whether we evolve papers into, you know, webinars or something, but we like to give people, you know, something to take home and read and, you know, not watching videos and all that. But, you know, as technology evolves, you know, so shall we. Our biggest evolution will be the nature of our topics.

So as the industry evolves, new things come around. You know, we're all talking about AI now. You know, three years ago, there was no AI. You know, now everything's AI and IG. So, you know, as we evolve and topics become more relevant to the information governance community, the symposium will evolve and address those topics as well.

Jim Merrifield (14:42.082)
Yeah, absolutely. It's exciting because we've seen the term AI governance be thrown out there quite a bit in the last few months or even this past year. This is sure exciting times being in our industry. Absolutely. So Chuck, final question for you. Do you have any final thoughts for the audience? I know we talked a lot about LFIGs, but again, you have tons of experience in the IG arena. So any?

Chuck Barth (15:00.698)
So,

Jim Merrifield (15:09.93)
Anything you're excited about or anything else you want to share with the audience?

Chuck Barth (15:14.278)
Well, keep up to date on your education with IG. It has changed quite a bit. I'm approaching 20 years in the industry now, and things have changed quite a bit. And you have to grow and evolve with changing and emerging technologies. So don't be complacent with the status quo. You need to push the envelope.

Find out on your own what's going out there in the industry and how that might be able to benefit your firm and take that to your firm leadership.

Jim Merrifield (15:50.722)
Wonderful advice, I couldn't have said it better myself. So thanks so much Chuck for joining us today on the hot seat and sharing some insights into LFIGS and also your experience in the information governance industry in general. And again, thank you everyone for attending today's episode of the InfoGov Hot Seat. Again, please visit our website, infogovhotseat.com to view our latest episodes. If you'd like to be a guest on the

hot seat like Chuck here. All you have to do is submit your information through our website and we'll get you on the calendar. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.