Collaborating for AccessStrategies for Processing the MALDEF and CRLA

Records

Joseph Geller, Project Archivist

Society of American ArchivistsAugust 9, 2012

San Diego, California

Project Overview

• Two-year project (March 2011-February 2013) sponsored by a CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources) Hidden Collections grant

• The grant covers the basic processing of a large set of records from two legal advocacy organizations:– MALDEF: Mexican American Legal Defense and

Education Fund – CRLA: California Rural Legal Assistance

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)

• Founded in 1968, MALDEF engages in litigation, public policy advocacy, and educational programs aimed at helping Mexican Americans achieve full equal rights.

• MALDEF has offices around the country and follows a strategy of high-impact class-action litigation.

The Records2000 linear feet: includes administrative, development, project, and legal case files

California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA)

• Founded in 1966, CRLA provides direct legal aid to the rural poor in California. They also engage in political advocacy, outreach, and education and are particularly focused on issues faced by migrant farmworkers.

• They have offices throughout California and handle individual client cases as well as class-action cases.

The Records500 linear feet: includes administrative, development, project, and legal case files

Project Plan

Basic, MPLP processing of 2500 linear feet of records:• Paging boxes from a temporary commercial storage facility• Re-housing in record-storage or manuscript boxes• Re-foldering only when necessary• Entering box-level descriptions (using Archivist’s Toolkit for finding aid

creation)• Updating catalog records and sending boxes to our permanent

storage facility• Processing (on average) 120 linear feet per month; 3-4 hours per foot.

Project team: Project Archivist; Project Coordinator; two processing assistants; two graduate student research assistants (including one History Ph.D. student and one Law School student)

The focus of the project is to process a large amount of material quickly!

Expectations and Preliminary Work

• A large set of MALDEF Records were processed at Stanford in the mid 1990s

• A very small amount of material was restricted (less the 1% of the collection)

• This collection has been open with no issues for over ten years

• Reviewed Deeds of Gift and available listings

• Prior to the current project, we sampled a number of boxes – and saw no red flags

Publically Available Legal Records

Anything filed with the court is public (unless it’s filed under seal):• Pleadings (i.e.

Depositions, Declarations, Motions, Interrogatories)

• Briefs• Transcripts of proceedings• Published Opinions

Privacy and Confidentially Issues

• Records in both the MALDEF and CRLA collections contain records protected by privacy and confidentially laws.

• After identifying what these issues were, we developed strategies for addressing them – with the understanding that we would seek approval and guidance from both organizations.

Discovery and Exhibit Files

During the discovery phase attorneys gather material that could be used as exhibits (evidence) in court. Many of these document types will contain privacy and confidentiality issues:• Employment: employee performance

evaluations/personnel files• Education: student transcripts• Immigration: alien registration forms• Voting rights: voter registration forms• Medical care: insurance claims

Discovery and Exhibit Files - Continued

• High-level review– Due diligence for restricting loose discovery

files with privacy information

Issue to consider: exhibits filed in court are technically part of the public record but can still contain sensitive information

Sealed Records

• Usually easy to identify (physically sealed)

• Can only be unsealed by the court

• Restricting for future evaluation may be useful but may not be practical

Work Product

• Documents prepared in anticipation of litigation

• Protects legal strategy during the life of the case

• After the case is over, this protection is usually not a significant issue

• Attorneys still may have concerns, especially if a case is recent and related to ongoing litigation

Input is needed from organizations for identifying materials that require restricting

Attorney-Client Privilege

• Protects legal communications between the lawyer and client

• Some argue that this protection lasts forever

• Many documents that fall under this protection will be unrecognizable to an archivist

Input is needed from the organizations for identifying materials that require restricting

How to provide access and protect privacy?

What we felt we could do on our own:

• High-level review for discovery files; due diligence for identifying attorney-client privilege

• Restrict materials identified as private or

confidential for a reasonable time

• Create a User-Agreement form

In addition to these precautions, we still felt that we needed input from the organizations.

• High-level review will not catch everything – organizations need to be aware of this

• Even if we were able to do an item-level review, some attorney-client privilege materials may be unrecognizable

• The organization may have other concerns that we are not aware of, i.e. work product for a specific case

MALDEF Collaboration

We corresponded with MALDEF via email and they agreed to our plan:

• High-level review (anticipate restricting about 5-7% of the collection)

• 75 years from date of document closure period for restricted material

• User-Agreement Form

CRLA Collaboration

CRLA was more concerned about privacy and confidentiality issues. This is probably due to a number of factors:• Handles individual client cases as well as class-action

cases. • Federally funded and involved in ongoing lawsuit• State-specific issues of responsibility

*CRLA determined that a review of the material by CRLA staff was required

CRLA ReviewWorkflow:• Meetings and training• Law student review of materials• CRLA review of law student’s findings

Types of records restricted by CRLA:• Case summaries presented in meetings

Other results:• Future accessions will be pre-screened by CRLA

Conclusion

• Understanding and collaborating with the specific organization is important when opening legal records for research.

• Collaboration leads to a helpful records management feedback loop, which will make processing future accessions easier.

• The records of legal advocacy organizations are an important resource for examining the history of civil rights. Collaborating and establishing an ongoing dialogue with these organizations will help ensure continued access to these records.

Questions? Contact jgeller@stanford.edu