UK GDPR requires that you do not keep data for longer than necessary. The Information Retention Policy details the relevant holding periods.
Starting simple, where you are sent documents in error, where you are sent a new enquiry but give no advice (no matter how preliminary), and generally where you are sure you will not need the information in question (e.g. identification documents such as passports and utility bills provided for AML reasons which you have passed on to the Clients Team), you should delete these documents as soon as you have reached your conclusion that you can do so.
As regards documents which contain no third-party personal information (e.g. templates and precedents and useful documents, duly stripped of personal information as necessary), these can be retained as long as you like. You do not have to put these in NetDocuments, but if you choose to, then you should save these into your personal cabinet rather than the clients/matters cabinet and ensure no personal information is stored in such folder. (NetDocuments will not autodelete the contents of that folder after the retention period has ended.)
You should also delete from your Outlook deleted items (emails) and your Recycle Bin (documents), all items older than a year. Naturally, all client emails and documents that you might legitimately need one day should be filed in the client file in NetDocuments. If the matter never proceeds to an instruction (but where you did have some initial discussions that could lead to some possible liability), then you are well advised to keep a folder in Outlook called "client enquiries" and to delete annually all documents older than 15 years.
All other documents (including your Outlook sent items) should be put into the appropriate client/matter folder in NetDocuments. Our data retention tool, Filetrail, will notify you once the appropriate file retention period has been reached (retention periods start at fifteen years and increase for work with longer limitation periods). Shortly before the appointed time for deletions, you will be given an opportunity to retain documents for longer if required (e.g. for litigation purposes) and UK GDPR permits (broadly, your ongoing access is still necessary'). Once you have filed emails to NetDocuments, the local copies in Outlook should be deleted. You can do this any time that suits you, but you are advised not to delay and not to keep any emails within Outlook longer than 3 years after the end of the matter (checking of course you have duly filed them first to NetDocuments where they belong!) Failure to regularly delete from Outlook items filed to NetDocuments can result in oversized Outlook accounts that can cause problems for users.
You can of course contact the IT Team for assistance with data deletion or the Administration Team for assistance with hard-copy file destruction and archiving. You can arrange for deletion/destruction directly with a supplier, but you will need to ensure they are a member of the BSIA.
For completeness, you may hold other documents that do not relate to Keystone. How long you retain these documents is a matter for you. A rule of thumb would be up to two years, but you will need to consider this properly, and naturally this is outside the scope of this Operating Manual. These documents should obviously not be stored in NetDocuments.