A disaster plan in action: how a law firm in the World Trade Center survived 9/11 with vital records and employees intact.

• Author: Barr, Jean
• Position: Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP

When two planes slammed into the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the law firm Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP (SAB&W) was hit directly. The firm occupied floors 54 through 59 in the North Tower, the building hit first. Within the first hour of hearing the news in the main office in Chicago, the firm's disaster recovery plan was pulled from shelves, copied, and distributed to key supervisory personnel and management committee lawyers.

Just five months earlier, SAB&W was formed through the merger of Sidley & Austin and Brown & Wood to become a single multinational firm with 1,500 lawyers and more than 3,000 total personnel working in 14 offices in six countries. In New York on 9/11, approximately 600 people were assigned to the WTC offices and 400 to the office on Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

The firm was in the process of consolidating the different systems--manual and automated--from both firms, as each had its own network with different hubs, as well as two different e-mail systems (Outlook and Lotus Notes), document management systems (iManage and PCDocs), and telephone systems. The systems consolidation was just beginning, with September 30 and December 31 being the next target dates for many system changes.

Although all client/matter numbers were changed in a data conversion in May 2001, several more data conversions were planned, with the final data consolidation in the records departments scheduled for September 15-17. This involved changing all barcoded folder numbers for the former Brown & Wood's 300,000 folders, as this was far less than the former Sidley & Austin's 2 million folders.

Protecting Vital Records

When the disaster recovery plan was instituted, the first documents needed were contact lists: employees' home and emergency phone numbers, vendor lists, and client lists. Of greatest concern was the safety of the firm's employees. Human resources personnel in the Chicago office began calling all New York employees, and by the next morning, all but a handful were accounted for. By September 13, only one individual had not been located.

The emphasis on communication continued throughout the day on 9/11 and for several weeks afterward. Bulletins were posted on the firm's Internet site, www.sidley.com, and the management committee sent internal e-mails to all personnel. A quick decision was made on 9/11 to staff the switchboard for 48 hours with SAB&W operators between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00...