Legal E-Records Management

The Office of the Legal Adviser (L) acts as the Department's lead counsel in legal matters arising in the courts or via other investigative means. It is L's duty to represent the Department in these matters, working in conjunction with the Department of Justice (DOJ). While DOJ provides some limited consultation and guidance to L and may act as lead on a case, the Department is responsible for ensuring that evidentiary materials are properly retained, discovered, gathered, and produced. Legal proceedings are on-going, with service from the courts received on a daily basis, many of which result in litigation. As such, L must maintain the technological capacities to gather, protect, evaluate, review, and produce documents in response to these legal proceedings. L is also the lead bureau for the Dept. for FOIA requests. The Office of Treaty Affairs provides guidance on all aspects of U.S. and international treaty law and practice. The Office manages the C175 process, under which the State Department approves the negotiation and conclusion of all international agreements to which the U.S. will become a party. The Office also coordinates with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on issues involving the Senate's advice and consent to ratification of treaties. L is also responsible for managing the U.S. treaty archives, reporting eligible agreements to Congress under the Case Act, publishing texts of U.S. international agreements in the TIAS series, compiling the annual Treaties in Force publication, and registering U.S. international agreements with the United Nations. The Treaty Office also serves as the international depositary for certain multilateral treaties for which the U.S. has assumed this role, including the North Atlantic Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the Biological Weapons Convention.

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