About Our Client
McKenzie Lake Lawyers is a large full-service law firm with more than 60+ lawyers. They have offices in London, Guelph, Ontario and Victoria, British Columbia. McKenzie Lake Lawyers was founded in 1998 in London, Ontario, following the merger of two firms with roots extending back to the 1930s.
The Challenge: Reducing Storage Space
A number of years ago the London, Ontario office of McKenzie Lake Lawyers was planning a move. The challenge – a basement library full of bound Minute Books, some as old as the law firm itself. Relocating to newer more modern office space in downtown London meant moving the Minute Book Library was not an option. However, many of the Minute Books were for active clients and corporations and as such the McKenzie Lake team required regular access to these records.
The Solution: A Digital Archive
McKenzie Lake Lawyers sought the expert advice and services of Bay Area Records. They wanted a digital archive for these Minute Books, and a partner who understood their unique privacy and accuracy requirements. Bay Area Records had a long track record of industry leading quality standards and had successfully digitized more than 10,000,000 pages of confidential hospital patient records.
The McKenzie Lake and Bay Area Records teams had meaningful conversations to plan all the details of the project. More than 1,100 Minute Books were packed and shipped from London to Bay Area Records in downtown Hamilton. A detailed inventory was created so that both Parties always knew the status of all Minute Books. This inventory included whether originals were to be confidentially shredded by Bay Area Records, or reassembled after scanning and delivered back to McKenzie Lake, in cases where their clients wanted to keep the originals.
The Solution: Further Consolidation
Bay Area Records delivered all Minute Books back to McKenzie Lake in digital format for storage in the firm’s electronic corporate records system. All images met the necessary standards to ensure that the digital copy of each Minute Book could be maintained as the permanent legal copy.
The results were so positive that McKenzie Lake again engaged the services of Bay Area Records in 2022, when another local law office joined the Firm. This law office had hard copy Minute Books that McKenzie Lake needed consolidated into their digital archive. This time Bay Area Records also provided on site packing services, as well as the laborious work of removing the documents from the bound Minute Books. Bay Area Records delivered another 600 Minute Books to McKenzie Lake in digital format and the firm is now considering completing a similar project for another of their offices.
