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This invites a wider question about how we arrange matters with clients from the beginning of the relationship and/or on each new ins instruction. And let's also bear in mind that paper files will be a thing of the past within a relatively few years. This sorry tale shows us, if it shows anything, the need to redesign our systems so as to create a would which is all of: fairer, easier and cheaper to regulate, more effective for the clients and carbon neutral.

The sensible reforms are within our own hands as practitioners and are ones that we can and should be calling for both in our contractual dealings and lobbying of rule-makers.

Let's just all tell the client in our TOBs that (i) we have no contractual duty to keep paper files and (ii) that we discharge any common law or statutory 'retention' duty once a matter is closing by lodging the file in a secure cloud storage facility, copying it anyway at the same time to the client [who may well of course lose it, as many clients do] that either party can access anytime later in perpetuity (and so never mind the vexed question of what is a 'reasonable period' of retention).

And so is not the answer here new rules which create this relatively cost-free and pollution-free system of in essence the client and the lawyer jointly holding their own data however long they like?

And look at the savings for the environment too!