Successful Business News asked employment law attorney Bill Nolan, managing partner of the Columbus office of Barnes & Thornburg, to offer tips about what documents a small business owner should retain and for how long.

According to Nolan, it is important “for any business to have a plan for document retention. Failure to do so can directly violate certain legal obligations, and also subject the business to greater risk in the event of litigation.”

There are specific legal obligations to retain certain documents, he says. One easy example is that federal law requires most employers to retain wage payment records for a period of three years. Employers can find these particular requirements at www.dol.gov. Furthermore, state and local laws may impose additional requirements, so it would be wise for a company owner to consult with a business lawyer licensed in their state to become familiar with those promulgations.

While many aspects of a document retention policy are judgment calls, it would be prudent to include rules about how long general company e-mails should be retained on a server, says Nolan. While individual businesses will respond to this suggestion differently, Nolan says there should be no flexibility on one aspect of the policy: it should be adhered to, as written.

Another important consideration for business owners to recognize is that “there is no one-size-fits-all answer to document retention and destruction,” he says. Even a small business needs to integrate the legal, operational and technological aspects of document retention, so having the appropriate professionals working together to find the right answers for that entity is a wise approach.

However, cautions Nolan, it is foolhardy for a document retention policy to be created haphazardly. Merely copying such a policy found online or elsewhere without thought about whether its perimeters are appropriate for your business can lead to a path of failure.

“In litigation, your business will be at risk if you have not followed your own policy and, as a policy, cannot produce documents that are important to that litigation. Therefore, it is important the business invest some time adopting a policy in a thoughtful way that will not only satisfy legal requirements but also work for your business,” Nolan says.

There are countless resources entrepreneurs can utilize to help them organize their documents and create document retention policies. Two such examples include the Small Business Administration and the IRS.

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Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer who tweets as @girlwithapen.