Streamlining DSARs for Legal Professionals with Smartbox.ai
The legal profession is well-known for its mountains of paperwork and bulky case files, but when Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) are added to the equation, the paper mountain can quickly become an unstoppable avalanche.
It is a minefield for both the clients and the legal practitioners themselves, and when clients are asked to respond to DSARs, the first place they will turn to is their legal advisors for help and guidance.
Legal firms may well deal in personal data all the time, but DSARs bring this issue to a new intensity level.
The Challenges
DSARs are time consuming and labour intensive, and involve processing large volumes of documentation in short timescales and to pressing deadlines. Each one is not just covering a handful of documents either, they can run into the thousands, or even tens of thousands.
Typically, organisations have one month to respond to the request, which can pass very quickly and catch many firms out, as well as tying someone down with a laborious and thankless task, and taking them away from their core job function.
And of course, it will not just be one client that is hit with a DSAR request – legal firms will likely have multiple clients all having similar DSAR demands at the same time. This DSAR demand will only continue to increase.
Also, legal documents, or large swathes of legal documents, are often redacted to comply with laws and regulations, and to protect sensitive information such as personal identities, financial details, and intellectual property. It is also a vital tool to preserve the integrity of a legal process, as once in the wrong hands, it can have a severe impact on a live case.
So, with all this in mind, it will be a relief to know that Smartbox.ai technology can help take all this pain away for both sides, and make the DSAR process easy, stress free and above all, compliant.
Why Smartbox.ai?
By using Smartbox.ai, clients can simply upload their documentation and their legal team can then go through it and undertake a manageable review process on their behalf in a fraction of the time it would normally take.
The software will spot duplication of documents and remove those duplications – particularly where email trails are concerned – the same email may have been uploaded five, six or more times. Smartbox.ai software can automatically identify all the duplications and remove those instantly for the client.
This process alone can reduce the data set significantly, often by thousands of documents, saving the time it would have taken a member of staff to manually sift through all those documents and remove the duplicates, and ultimately saving the client money in the process in terms of additional legal fees.
The technology also deals with redactions and helps to identify personal information that needs to be kept out of the loop.
Often names are mentioned in documents that need to be taken out, because they are not the recipient of the DSAR – this is where the Dictionaries function of Smartbox.ai technology can come into play. Using Dictionaries, the software can identify personal data such as names, email addresses, telephone numbers and help remove any data that should not be disclosed.
Dictionaries also use risk indicators to highlight any trigger words in a dataset to make it easy for the user to identify and navigate to where something is contained in a document that can have potentially devastating consequences if accidentally shared. It will help give all sides reassurance over breaching GDPR.
Smartbox.ai is fast becoming the technology company of choice for legal firms needing to speed up their DSAR process. Request a 15-min demo to learn more about how Smartbox.ai: https://smartbox.lislex.xyz/book-a-demo