Whitepaper

Top Five Reasons

to Go Paperless.
By John Heckman

Faced with ever-growing mountains of paper and increased storage costs,

many law firms seek to “go paperless.” But what exactly does that mean?

Most law firms do not actually go totally paperless. In a
100% paperless law office, incoming documents and mail
are scanned and then discarded or filed. Lawyers never
actually see the paper. They refer to their scanned version
through a document management system. However, scan-
ning every document may not be feasible. Thus, the more
common solution entails scanning the most important types
of documents, such as correspondence and court pleadings.
What You Need to Go Paperless
A typical paperless law office has four components. First and
foremost, you need one or more scanners. Depending on
the size of your firm, you’ll want either one or more desktop
scanner or network scanner — or better yet a mix of both.
For example, network scanners, which are typically shared
across numerous users and enable scanning directly to
your local or global network, offer convenience for casual
scanning, but someone who frequently scans documents
may benefit from their own desktop scanner. Also, if some
of your colleagues frequently travel or work offsite, you
may want to purchase a few portable scanners as well.
Second, you need to develop a system for naming and
organizing scanned documents. A series of scans labeled
“01278954.pdf” is not useful. If your office is document-
intensive, you may want to invest in a dedicated document
management system.

Third, large monitors make it easier to review documents
without having to print them. Many studies have demonstrated
the benefits of more screen real estate.
Finally, a successful paperless law office requires unanimous
buy-in from lawyers and staff. It does nobody any good to scan
a document if people ignore the electronic copy and seek the
paper original. Your firm needs to market the advantages of
going paperless, and provide necessary training.
Before making this considerable investment in equipment and
time, you probably want to learn more about the benefits of
going paperless. Below you’ll find the top five benefits.
1. Increased Productivity
Call it a variant of Murphy’s Law — when you need a paper file,
it is inevitably located at the bottom of a large stack of files on
the floor in the corner of somebody’s office. Law firm personnel
can spend literally hours every year looking for paper files. In
an industry that typically charges by the hour that’s not a
productive use of time.
By contrast, you can immediately retrieve a scanned file from
your document management system or even a well-organized
folder system on your file server. If you use desktop search
software you can find it that way as well. With a document
management system, multiple people can retrieve a given
document at the same time, improving efficiencies.
When you scan a document, you get an image file. To convert
the image of the text into searchable text, you can use OCR
software — often included with a scanner. Once you’ve made
scanned files searchable, it becomes even easier to find them
because you can search for any phrase in the document, such
as a client name, not just the name of the document. As an
added advantage, if you want to re-use certain language from
an old document that exists only on paper, with digital files it is
trivial to copy and paste once you scan and OCR it rather than
having to find the given passage and retype it.
2. Improved Client Service
At one time or another, every client has been on the receiving
end of the dreaded phrase “I’ll have to check the document
and get back to you.” Consider how much happier your clients
would be if you could say, “Let me pull up the document now
and check for you,” thus resolving their question during a
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single phone call, saving your client time as well as the time you
would have spent retrieving a hardcopy, finding the necessary
information, and then following up with the client. As an added
bonus, the ability to search documents electronically makes it
less likely that you’ll overlook a key passage.
More efficient service means happier clients who pay their bills
faster. Even better, improving your client relations will make your
clients more likely to hire your firm for other services and refer
others to your firm.
3. Reduction of Operating Costs
Storage costs represent a major expense. Typically, office space is
second only to salaries in terms of cost, especially in large cities.
As the piles of paper grow, so too do your storage costs. Scanning
documents can substantially reduce storage costs by eliminating
a significant portion of your paper files and the storage space
required to store them. You can then put the space once used for
storage to more productive use.
Before you call a shredding company, read your state bar’s ethics
rules on the retention of physical files, especially in practice areas
such as Real Estate or Trusts and Estates. Even if you have to
keep the files for a specified period of time, scanning them will
enable you to store them offsite as cheaply as possible.
Scanning documents also reduces time spent requesting
documents from the file room or even warehouse. Finally, since
you can easily email scanned documents, you can reduce your
phone bill by faxing documents less often. Some paperless
law firms have even eliminated their fax machines entirely and
switched to online fax services.
4. Better Security
Paper documents are subject to two risks — physical theft and
destruction from a variety of disasters (fire, flood, etc.). When
you scan confidential documents, you can restrict access to
them in a granular manner. For example, you can limit the
access of sensitive information or specific case files to select
people. Law firms subject to federal and state regulations
regarding the protection of client information will find compliance
significantly easier with scanned documents.
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5. Environmentally Sound
If your firm culture is such that environmental issues are
important or you have a clientele that cares about these
issues, going paperless can boost your status in this respect.
For example, digitization of your files will result in fewer
photocopies, reducing company paper consumption. Not only
is this an environmentally friendly result, it also saves the firm
money in consumable expenses. In addition, if you can shred
your paper files and have them recycled, you will have given
back to the environment and reduced your carbon footprint.

Conclusion
Properly implemented using the right technologies, going
paperless can ease compliance requirements, save your firm
money while dramatically improving productivity, and improve
client service.

John Heckman of Heckman Consulting (www.heckmanco.

com), has assisted law firms with technology issues for over
25 years. John is a Certified Consultant and Trainer for Amicus
Attorney and other software applications. He is widely
published and authors the legal technology blog, Does It
Compute (www.doesitcompute.typepad.com).

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