We've all seen movies where a smoking gun document surfaces late in a crisis. While this can be entertaining when it is someone else's problem, most of us would prefer to avoid this scenario with our own companies. The best way to avoid smoking guns is to implement sound document retention policies. Topics to be covered include education and document retention challenges, proper maintenance of files, teaching law to non-lawyers and making the law relevant, encouraging non-lawyers to use proper document creation processes, and much more.