AI Governance and Defensible Disposal: A Practical Roadmap for 2026

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[00:00] for one source of truth is becoming everywhere at this point.
[00:03] What most organizations get wrong about defensible disposal?
[00:07] If anything that's all or nothing, you have to do it all at one time or you can't be compliant.
[00:12] What's the cost of getting it wrong?
[00:14] You only have too many chances of socializing initiatives.
[00:17] It will need to credibility erosion.
[00:19] Restarting those initiatives is just even that much harder.
[00:21] We retain prompts or outputs, right?
[00:23] What's your kind of take?
[00:25] This is the only question where I had to go out and do research.
[00:27] If we will give an answer, a lot of these tools were built without even the consideration of governance in the first place.
[00:32] If there's one area where I don't want to introduce a lot of guests for a great now it's here.
[00:36] You didn't prevent AI from amplifying like add IG such as overreaching our misclassification.
[00:42] We don't have anything in place now, but it's something we hope to surface pretty soon.
[00:45] Alright, so today is global information governance day 2026. We have five identical questions, real answers, on time to value,
[01:06] Defense ability integrations and AI governance.
[01:10] So again, welcome to the InfoGov hot seat this show where information governance flips into
[01:15] governed intelligence and data becomes your AI advantage.
[01:20] So I'm Jim Marifield, them for this global information governance day special.
[01:25] I am joined by my co-host for today.
[01:27] Lee Zidwik Lee, thanks so much for being here.
[01:30] Thanks Jim.
[01:31] looking forward to the conversation and hearing more from our partners and what teams can actually implement this year.
[01:37] Yeah, absolutely and of course looking forward to having the conversation with you and the others are in guest is going to be Nick Burge from Lataros.
[01:45] Are you doing Nick? Hey Jim, how's it going? Thanks for joining us today. Nick Burge from Lataros. Of course, focusing on file trail, where at that platform.
[01:53] platform. And so before we get into like all the questions, I want to
[01:57] ensure you're a title and what you actually do at the...
[02:00] Yeah, Nick Bird, senior product manager here at Lutera, both focused in
[02:06] file trail and power dust top applications here, and it didn't
[02:10] year since the acquisition that we've joined back in 2020 for. Awesome.
[02:14] Great to have you on the hot seat. And one sentence Nick,
[02:17] a tell us what most organizations get wrong about defensible disposal.
[02:22] Yeah, I think the first thing that really comes to my mind is that they really kind of think that it's all or nothing that you have to kind of do it all at one time or otherwise you can't be compliant.
[02:33] That there isn't really any room for starting small, you know, there's tons of precedence that say you can, you know, acting good faith and moving towards compliance and I find that trying to target kind of easy wins and start building the framework for, you know, actually on that is the thing that I think is where most people get it wrong.
[02:51] And I think it's really critical to kind of focus on where you can actually make the biggest impact in the look at the little angle and demonstrate some of those movements towards compliance for sure.
[03:00] Yeah, so what's the cost of getting it wrong?
[03:03] Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, it's buying an adoption.
[03:07] You only have like so many chances, I think, to socialize and it should have like, especially when you're talking about disposition, where the sensitivity and the risk are really high.
[03:15] You can have all the bells and whistles of a really strong platform.
[03:19] You can have a really detailed and documented record retention schedule.
[03:22] But as far as getting the stakeholders and winning that sentiment is something that you only have
[03:27] so many attempts at and I think that having large shotgun approaches which can backfire or
[03:32] having poorly executed plans where you're not socializing some of these initiatives,
[03:38] it can really kind of lead to credibility erosion.
[03:41] and so it makes kind of restarting those initiatives just even that much harder, you know.
[03:46] Yeah, so Nick, what are the top three IG capabilities you're prioritizing in 2026?
[03:54] And what's specific customer problems are driving those investments?
[03:58] What are you hearing customers want to, well, where are we focusing?
[04:02] Yeah, you know, I think, disposition and retention has always been a focus that we've really kind
[04:07] I've done a really well job in excelling in and I think that a where we're seeing a lot of growth and need is in the
[04:12] amount of mobility and kind of transfers and movements between firm to firm. Really, you know, it's not so much
[04:18] one attorney or two attorneys, it's large-scale content moving between organizations. And I think that some of the work flow that comes with that is something that we're speaking to or working to speak to.
[04:29] I think having just some of the initial tools in place to execute on that is one thing, but having
[04:34] a means to really make it intuitive and performative is the next kind of half of it,
[04:40] and that's where we're wanting to spend some of our top focus in this year.
[04:44] And so we'll have a lot to announce there as we start to roll out those incremental improvements.
[04:48] I think we'll also just fundamentally being under the Leterra umbrella.
[04:52] I'm expanding this to be able to have more access into some of the other collaborative platforms that the organization offers.
[04:58] and it makes sense to be able to expand some of our governance capabilities there.
[05:01] So that's another area that we're really trying to kind of lean into and focus.
[05:05] And we have lots of governance focus utilities.
[05:07] So having a cohesive offering is something that we're really excited about trying to provide.
[05:12] And so, I think this year we're going to have a lot to be able to kind of speak to and show for that.
[05:16] And then kind of the last one, I never like to kind of leave some of the physical stuff behind
[05:21] because I think it's still something that's so important.
[05:23] And in close to what we do, we've really seen a huge spike in users being able to use our tools for physical records disposition.
[05:30] And that's actually growing more than we've ever really kind of seen it.
[05:33] And so one of the things we like to really start working on is provide insights into a whole box disposition.
[05:38] Really get keen inside and like this entire box is ready to go and believe it or not,
[05:43] like the work it takes to be able to surface that isn't actually as easy as it really seems.
[05:48] and some of the approaches that firms kind of go to get to that varies.
[05:52] And so we want to be able to respond to that and that's something that we're all focusing on as well.
[05:56] Not to mention, lastly, Microsoft 365. I think integration with a lot of the different components of that is definitely where we're headed,
[06:04] kind of speaking into what Lee was talking about meeting attorneys where they work,
[06:08] you know, and that's something that we're really that echo is loudly and we're we're focusing onto.
[06:13] I can't leave that physical stuff behind.
[06:16] And no, no.
[06:17] It's all there.
[06:18] It's all there.
[06:18] Yeah, exactly.
[06:19] Yeah.
[06:20] And it's still being generated too.
[06:21] It's not stopping either.
[06:23] So yeah.
[06:24] No.
[06:24] For sure.
[06:24] So here's a question that for a typical legal or a regulatory regulated enterprise.
[06:31] But what is the first, what is the successful 90 days, first 90 days look like in your platform?
[06:36] Yeah.
[06:36] I think before we were really focused on giving visibility and having some fundamental records
[06:42] of manager and traditional workflows,
[06:45] but now that we've been able to kind of really build out
[06:47] some of our disposition and retention capabilities.
[06:50] The first 90 days are,
[06:52] we're actually going in having customers
[06:54] are executing distractions at large scale now.
[06:57] We're actually actually doing production destruction
[06:59] in pilot phases now too.
[07:01] So really the first 90 days we're having customers
[07:04] actually carrying forward disposition
[07:06] on in ways that we really haven't seen before.
[07:09] So both physically and electronically.
[07:10] It's good to hear.
[07:12] Yeah, so here's a question I'm like auditing, right?
[07:15] Everybody, everybody, you have to produce,
[07:19] everybody's either in and out or they got to produce
[07:21] an audit report and things like that.
[07:23] How can a customer like what evidence can you produce such as
[07:27] log, ports, probals, exceptions, those things in your platform?
[07:33] Yeah, we have a really powerful audit utility that kind of
[07:36] tracks every event in the system.
[07:39] I think one of the areas that we really try to also surface that is not just how we, you know,
[07:44] activity is done against one record to another. But really, how are we applying retention and
[07:49] how are we weighing and weighing and scaling that for my item to item? We have a really complex
[07:55] matrix of how we apply those retention rules. And so not only that, we can surface how they're applied
[08:01] in this system, but also our user documentation kind of also parallels and surfaces that to you
[08:06] so that you can be confident and know only,
[08:09] are you applying retention whether it be practice for driven,
[08:11] but from an outside council guideline,
[08:13] you have factors that are playing in from your client rules,
[08:16] or your matter-based rules.
[08:17] They may even have media type rules within a certain matter,
[08:21] or a certain client, where a certain type of document
[08:24] has to be retained within a specific amount of time.
[08:27] So we want to be able to surface that,
[08:29] and if you have overriding retention policies,
[08:32] we'll show how those have been changed and why they changed.
[08:35] And what it was before, what it is now,
[08:37] who made the change, it was automated or not.
[08:40] And then make that something that's like downloadable and
[08:42] surf-esible.
[08:43] So, yeah.
[08:44] That's excellent, especially, you know,
[08:45] most organizations where you got to maintain like an ISO certification or
[08:51] a sock too.
[08:52] And those logs are really important.
[08:54] So for the security folks, it's a great that, you know,
[08:58] you have those features.
[08:59] So let's talk about, I know you mentioned 3, 6, 5,
[09:02] But which repositories and collaboration tools do you cover best today?
[09:08] Like such as DMS, email, you know, 365 teams, file shares, all those things?
[09:13] Yeah, for sure.
[09:14] For sure, right now, obviously net documents and I manage the various flavors of their offering
[09:20] for on-prem or cloud.
[09:23] We integrate with file shares as well.
[09:25] So we can provide reject strings to scrape the client matter data out of the pathings
[09:31] so that we can execute this position and some
[09:33] searchability there too.
[09:35] And then from a physical standpoint, we can also
[09:37] collaborate and integrate with Iron Mountain
[09:39] and access off-site storage so that you can have
[09:42] requests of film and workflow from that as well.
[09:46] And then this last year, we published all of our APIs
[09:48] and rest format, which expanded some of our integration
[09:50] and points into old management tools
[09:53] and capabilities.
[09:54] And even office services applications,
[09:55] if you wanted to do more like ticketing
[09:57] base, like fulfillment and requests as well.
[10:00] really allows just some of the keys to be put into the hands of the firms to determine how they want to best kind of leverage some of those endpoints and integrate as well.
[10:08] So yeah.
[10:09] Nick, you see a lot of the question, where do you still see gaps around chat and collaboration and perspective?
[10:16] And what do teams do in the meantime? Well, I think a lot of us are trying to figure a lot of this out.
[10:22] Yeah, I think the gaps really vary wildly from organization,
[10:27] organization.
[10:28] I think that historically kind of dependent on systematic management of some of those environments being like kind of well provisioned and well structured.
[10:35] I think that you know, you fire up teams for the first time and people kind of just go wild and you know, you might have a collaborative chat with just, you know, one or two colleagues versus, you know, the content being managed and say a structured team.
[10:47] team. And so I think that that's still is going to be pervasive and still exists. I think that's the gaps.
[10:54] I think are going to be best answered by AI, you know, can that help augment some of that information and surface some of that knowledge of where information
[11:03] truly lies. And so, I'm in a nice, I think way into the next question. Go ahead. Oh yeah. Well, I think I think in what we do in the meantime, I think that's difficult.
[11:12] you know, I think that we're still trying to figure that out. I think some of the solutions and some of these AI utilities that you know, we're hoping to even adopt and integrate are going to help maybe inform how we can best manage that going forward. Sorry. I didn't mean to.
[11:25] No, it's an important topic, which is why I want to have another question. So what specific controls do you provide to enable trusted AI use, data minimization, permissioning, proven sensitivity, labeling, retention, AI inputs and outputs and all that other.
[11:41] all that other fun stuff.
[11:43] Good anything to prevent AI from amplifying like that IG, such as over retention or misclassification.
[11:50] What are you looking at there?
[11:52] Yeah, this is an actual active development.
[11:55] It's something that we're highly focused on this year and looking to be able to do some workshops and demonstrations later on.
[12:02] But what we're really trying to what we focused on is building that foundation of human driven controls,
[12:08] which kind of help build that strong foundation and how we use the existing applications.
[12:14] But we are going to be focusing on incorporating AI into these tools,
[12:18] which is really going to be augmenting and not replacing those human-driven mechanisms.
[12:24] We want to make sure that we're building it on top of governance for a start-to-texture, not the other way around.
[12:30] And so we want to be able to view more of, you know, if there is PII or PHI, you know,
[12:36] Maybe there's confidence thresholds that users can interact with and help steer and guide and
[12:41] train the models over the content so that we're working with the content and not necessarily
[12:47] having it work for us. But again, this is something that's very much in flight that we're looking at.
[12:51] We don't have anything in place now, but it's something that we hope to be able to surface pretty soon.
[12:54] We appreciate that honesty, too, Nick. That goes a long way.
[12:59] So talking about prompts, I think every firm company is trying to figure out that we
[13:05] we retain prompts or outputs, right?
[13:07] What's your kind of take?
[13:09] I mean, you don't even have to talk specific to like-
[13:11] No, this is the only question
[13:14] where I had to go out into your research gym.
[13:15] So it's gonna be able to give an answer.
[13:17] But it's actually, it's actually,
[13:22] there's a lot to it because you've got geopolitical considerations
[13:25] both from European, US and US and US at state to state.
[13:29] And that's not even considering
[13:30] what the different sector specific requirements are,
[13:33] either on this, let alone what the tools that exist even allow for that type of like interaction.
[13:39] I think a lot of these tools were built without even the consideration of governance in the first
[13:43] place of what prompts, how do you keep prompts, what what models are you using and what we're
[13:49] bringing in. I want to answer that with just yes, but I do think that for now, I mean there's
[13:56] there's P.I. Iris.
[13:58] And in some of those that too, you know, you're asking personal questions,
[14:02] you might think it's work related, but it's still coming from a person.
[14:05] So there's just considerations that I think, you know,
[14:08] are going to have to be addressed, and it's going to take some time to fully grasp and get, you know,
[14:11] our hands around that.
[14:13] I think that those are going to be really good resources.
[14:15] You know, in the coming year, as is more information,
[14:18] it's, you know, published and an education gets proliferated across the discipline.
[14:23] And so I think it's going to be very much a collaborative effort for everybody to kind of learn and share which makes sense and what it is probably going to be some learning lessons along the way to I think that there's just some things we're not even anticipating that if that could potentially come into play from a governance standpoint.
[14:38] Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think we're all kind of figuring out together.
[14:42] I think that's the beauty of the practitioners or the law firms, the business partner and even consultants. I think we're all kind of working together on this stuff trying to improve products and
[14:52] products and figure it out. If there's one area where I do want to introduce a lot of
[14:56] guesswork right now it's here, right? And so there's already enough of that going on with
[15:00] the black box of this. Yeah. I think for a practical standpoint to real quick, I mean, as
[15:06] where teams are deciding whether to retain props or outputs, you want to
[15:10] siphon the technology, you want to understand why. What's the purpose? Oh, yeah.
[15:15] You know, is it driven by, we're seeing some plant requests to retain props and some instances.
[15:20] So that's a business case.
[15:22] You may have other efficiency gains or whatever.
[15:26] And then it comes out of that classic IG thing
[15:29] of the risk versus the benefit in doing that evaluation.
[15:32] Right.
[15:33] That's not the only thing I agree.
[15:34] I mean, the big question is going to be,
[15:36] you know, an allateral, at least in the law firm,
[15:38] side of lateral partner leaves or comes in.
[15:41] Are they going to take their problems with them?
[15:43] You know, or is it the firms?
[15:44] Right.
[15:45] Where we don't have to answer that, you know,
[15:46] but definitely a question that that I think,
[15:50] you know, firms are asking, right?
[15:52] You know, who owns the prompt?
[15:54] You know, is it the firm?
[15:55] Is it the person?
[15:56] Is it the client?
[15:56] Right.
[15:57] So.
[15:57] Right.
[15:58] It's interesting because we've gotten some tools.
[16:01] We've gotten to play with like researcher and co-pilot.
[16:04] And some of these like more like, you know, tools that I've never really had a chance to even
[16:08] see before where they're searching, you get to the internet against your email, against
[16:12] your one drive against other people's content that might actually have other team members
[16:16] content that might be shared in a SharePoint site
[16:19] and you're getting insights both internally and externally
[16:22] in a way that we really haven't seen before,
[16:23] which I think is just gonna be really speaking to you also
[16:27] the idea of meeting people where they work.
[16:29] And I think that's becoming more and more everywhere.
[16:32] The one source of truth is becoming,
[16:34] I hate to say it, but it's almost it's everywhere at this point.
[16:37] Yeah, it is.
[16:39] So Nate, we talked about a lot here,
[16:40] but so here's the final question for you.
[16:43] And in one sentence, what should listeners do in the next 30 days to improve IG outcomes?
[16:50] Yeah, I'm really pragmatic.
[16:51] I like to be practical and I think, you know, start small.
[16:55] I think piloting is really important, whatever the initiative is.
[16:58] I love to be able to pilot retention and work through that, you know, who are we communicating
[17:03] to, who are the stakeholders, and what are some of the gotches that we might have considered.
[17:07] What do we want our emails to look like when we send out notifications?
[17:10] What do we want the language to feel like?
[17:12] So I think like starting some of that foundational work,
[17:14] if you haven't under on that under yet,
[17:17] is what would my recommendation be for sure?
[17:19] Well, as a voice.
[17:20] Well, Nick, thanks for joining us today.
[17:22] You showed a lot of great information.
[17:24] To appreciate you being on with us.
[17:26] Likewise, it was fun.
[17:27] Appreciate it.
[17:28] Yeah, it was awesome.
[17:29] Thanks.
[17:29] Thanks to you and the terrorist.
[17:31] Thank you.
[17:31] Thanks, everyone.
[17:32] Bye.
[17:32] Thank you.