Lessons Learned

Echoes of Northridge & I.R.A. Bombings

By Charles Christian

DUE TO the fact the that U.K. has had the dubious distinction of having I.R.A. terrorists waging a campaign in London, blowing up people and buildings, for the best part of 25 years, we do have -- sadly -- some experience with atrocities of this nature. Mercifully, none of the ones we have suffered have been on the scale of either the WTC or Pentagon outrages.

The nearest equivalent, in terms of material damage, was the 1992 Bishopsgate bombing in the City of London which saw the head offices of U.K. top 10 law firm Norton Rose damaged in the blast. (There were no casualties in the blast and the firm remains one of the largest legal players in the U.K.)

Lessons learned:

1: Will it work?

Having a contingency plan is not enough. You need a well rehearsed contingency plan, to ensure that all the precautions (backing up servers and data records, switching to alternative processing centers etc.) you think will work, will actually work in practice.

2: There goes the neighborhood.

It may not be what happens to your offices that is so important as what happens to the surrounding environment. For example Norton Rose's servers (and indeed most of their offices) survived the blast -- but the surrounding buildings were deemed so dangerous that staff were not allowed to go anywhere near them for 10 days.

3: You need friends.

A firm must have friends within both the profession and the I.T. supply industry, who will be prepared to help them out. For example Norton Rose staff were given immediate temporary accommodation in the offices of another City law firm who were themselves in the throes of moving to larger premises.

They also had a good working relationship with a major supplier of PC hardware and printers etc., so they were able to provide their staff with workstations within a matter of hours. Firms that have in the past made it their policy to screw the cheapest prices out of their suppliers -- and a lot of law firms do this -- may however find their suppliers are less willing to come to their rescue.

4: Clear desk policy.

One of the immediate consequences of the blast was to force all City institutions to introduce a "clear desk" policy for staff. In other words, at any one time the only papers on your desk are those you are working on at the time -- all other documents are either in a filing cabinet or one of the draws of your desk. Some firms take this issue so seriously that leaving documents lying around has become a sackable offense. Prior to this most lawyers -- and indeed most City offices -- followed the old approach of having piles of paper everywhere, including stacked along window sills.

Unfortunately when a bomb goes off, even if no other damage is caused it blows out windows and out of those windows tumbles thousands of often very confidential documents. As in New York City, the streets of London were littered with them after the Bishopsgate blast.

5: Budget for the little things.

When Norton Rose finally got back into their offices and started clearing up, it became apparent that some items of equipment -- such as laser printers - were so badly affected by dust, grit and glass splinters that it would be cheaper to replace the lot rather than try to repair them.

Unfortunately, given the way new generations of hardware appear every nine months or so, they found their replacement printers were new models with new printer drivers etc, so a considerable amount of time and effort had to be devoted to reconfiguring networks, PC default settings etc.

Charles Christian, an emeritus member of the Law Technology News Editorial Advisory Board, is the editor and publisher of Legal News Media and a consultant, based in Norfolk, U.K.