The Legalities of Imaging

The legal acceptability of properly authenticated paper documents is well established and accepted throughout various industries. However, the advent of scanning, networks and electronic documents has spawned debate regarding the legality of electronic documents. The statute, Act UPA 28USC p1732, already cites admissibility of electronic (copied) documents and is often used as the governing statute. Most technology today will meet the legal criteria required for record retention if proper procedures and processes are in place and well documented.

Two prominent groups have developed available resources to supreme court help users and integrators with defining the business processes required for deciding legal integrity. AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) released a report on document life cycle management that addresses this issue. The report reveals that, with proper authentication, electronic documents are admissible as evidence in trials or other legal environments.

The other group, The Code of Practice, is a result of a merger of Legal Images Initiative with Document Management Forum. While it does not guarantee legal admissibility, The Code of Practice helps to define the procedures and practices for companies to meet legal authentication of images.