Legal Office Shredding

Document Destruction Services for the Legal Profession
 

It’s a well-established fact that attorneys who deal with their clients' financial activities fall under the mandated provisions of the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 – better known as the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, or GLB. If your practice menu includes real estate closings, financial planning, or estate planning – or if you represent a client in any other financial area – you fall under GLB guidelines.

BudgetShred offers legal office shredding and document destruction in Maryland (MD), Virginia (VA) and Washington DC. We help lawyers and attorneys meet their Gramm-Leach Bliley (GLB) compliance needs!

In 2002, the American Bar Association filed an action in Federal District Court to exempt Attorneys from Title V of the GLB Act. The action is pending and will likely not be resolved for years. In the meantime, attorneys are still bound by GLB strictures.

But there’s good news: Compliance with the safeguarding provisions of GLB is simple, as is the disposal by shredding of files and financial records that contain your clients' Non-Public Information (NPI).

When you engage the services of a document shredding company like BudgetShred, Inc., GLB compliance incurs no additional cost. BudgetShred's document destruction process is based on Department of Defense guidelines for the destruction of secret and sensitive documents, so BudgetShred's guidelines far exceed the destruction guidelines of GLB.

Attorneys who hold financial information are bound by two issues of GLB compliance. First, they must perform due diligence in choosing a reliable vendor to shred NPI-containing documents. Second, they are required to give written permission to the vendor to remove NPI for the sole purpose of disposal by shredding. BSI would be in violation of certain provisions of GLB if we did not receive written permission from the generator of NPI (the attorney) to posses such information for the sole purpose of shredding.

BSI will simplify your due diligence portion of the regulation by supplying the name and phone number of our Insurance Claims Representative who will verify that BudgetShred has never had an employee dishonesty claim or any suit filed against us for any wrongdoing on our part whatsoever.

Attorneys practicing in the fields of personal injury, workers' compensation, social security disability and/or medical malpractice are also bound by the enactment of the Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA.

HIPPA protects the privacy of protected health information (PHI). If your files and records contain any of your clients' medical records you must comply with the HIPAA provisions for safeguarding and disposal by shredding of these records.

You are required to enter into a Business Associates Agreement with your document destruction vendor. For the same reasons outlined above, there are no additional costs for your compliance with the HIPAA provisions.


SAMPLE BUSINESS ASSOCIATES AGREEMENT (ON YOUR LETTERHEAD):