By Jason Kohlmeyer
If you are like me, you are plain sick of reading about the wonders of the paperless law office. If you listen to the apologists about going paperless, you will have a faster, more efficient law office with access to all documents anytime, anywhere, finding any document in seconds and reducing postage costs. They go on and on about the wonders of the scanner, searchable documents, cloud computing etc. etc.
Well, I have to admit after being a paperless office for 3 months now it is true. All of it. Every single word. Going from the traditional papered office with copies upon copies in a file folder organized (hopefully) with tabs to walking into court with an iPad and having every document, indexed, searchable within seconds and being able to annotate them has been a game changer. I am here to give you a quick overview on how we did it and how you can to.
The first thing you need is a scanner on each desk. Trust me on this, there needs to be a scanner on every desk, not a central one. Make it easy to use and it will be used, that’s the cardinal rule. Go and buy a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. It costs about $400 and is absolutely the easiest to use. Don’t do what I did the first time and buy an off brand scanner to save a few bucks; you can’t get support for it and it won’t be as easy to use as the Fujitsu.
Next, pick a day and say that is the day we are paperless. We went ahead and on a Monday we said everything is scanned as the mail is opened. It is scanned, saved and then emailed to the lawyer and client. We do something shocking next, we shred it. Yes, we put it in the shred bin if it is not irreplaceable (or more accurately hard to replace). If you don’t shred it, it is too easy to go back to paper and it is self-defeating.
We use iPads at our office. We love them, but they are not necessary. I’ll give you a quick example of how we use them and why the tablet computing works so well with a paperless office. Our office does Criminal Defense, Family Law and Work Comp. (I’ll leave the work comp. stuff alone for now and just deal on the Criminal Defense) If I have a pre-trial hearing and go to court, instead of grabbing the file I will grab my Ipad, go to Dropbox and make sure the police reports are in Dropbox. Then I take the iPad (and only the Ipad) and go to court. I can search the police report for keywords since it’s a searchable PDF. I can also annotate (using a very simple app called GoodReader) and then talk to the prosecutor or identify the issue for a contested hearing. No more lugging the file around and wondering on what page I saw something. To say it streamlines the process is a huge understatement.
The final step is probably the most technologically difficult, that is to say a 6th grader can do it. You need to get the document in the cloud (or your server if you never leave the office). Dropbox.com is what we use. The first 2 Gigs of storage are free (but you can always upgrade to 50 Gigs for $120/year or 100 Gig for $240 year). This might very well be enough for you if you are solo. We are a 3 lawyer firm and are only using 6 gigs.
There you go, another post talking about the wonders of the paperless office. It may or may not work for your firm, but without a doubt, you will see more iPads in court, you’ll get more documents via email and clients will expect faster turnaround. You can either wait until your competitors have it or do it now and take the lead.
Jason Kohlmeyer
Mankato, Minnesota
www.RokoLaw.com
June 9th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Just be sure to get everyone in the office on board before you make the leap.
The worst thing that can happen – and has happened in two of my offices now – is to introduce a new electronic system, but out of a desire to ease into the new technology you continue to use the old paper system as well.
So now, instead of increasing efficiency and reducing waste, you’ve done the opposite – and everyone quickly turns against the new technology because, hey, why are we even doing this? Weren’t things better when we were just using the old system?
And Luddite-ism – always lurking in every office – begins to grow among your coworkers.
June 9th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Adam, Fantastic point! If you don’t get complete buy in from every lawyer and equally important, every staffer, it will fail.
Jason Kohlmeyer
June 10th, 2011 at 1:19 am
Dropbox is a wonderful program – we’ve been using it for almost a year now, and are entirely satisfied with it. It allows you to collaborate with other attorneys even from other firms with the simple step of sharing a folder with them. Additionally, a program called Airdropper (https://airdropper.com/) can be used as an add-in to allow your clients to put files into Dropbox without giving them access to your system.
June 29th, 2011 at 9:18 am
We love dropbox and the scansnap too. Question for you…do each of your attorneys/staff have their own dropbox account and then you just share the folder? Or do you share the one dropbox account amongst your firm? We have done the former, as I’m just guessing that the latter would be against the terms of use, but I never have actually looked into it.
June 29th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
“To say it streamlines the process is a huge understatement.”
As a prosecutor who uses his iPad to try 10-15 cases per week, I completely agree. The iPad is a must for litigators, especially those of us who are in court on a regular basis.
Great article.
Rob Dean
http://www.walkingoffice.com
July 1st, 2011 at 12:18 pm
This sounds great, but I was wondering how you handle the need to have an actual document in the court room. Do you just plan ahead and take a copy with you for trial/final disposition?
With my criminal practice here in North Carolina I feel like I’m always having to have something on hand to put in the file.
October 16th, 2011 at 9:52 am
@preston
With the iPad at the court room and an easy to access digital archive you will have all the document available. With the ZyLab search solution in your digital office you even can use fuzzy questions to find the documents you require for your case.
Within a digital court a cloud based printing solution should be made available. This means that you could send documents from your iPad to a multifunctional in the court building as you need it. With accounting enabled the court can even invoice your office on printed pages, so no public money is spend.
With the scanning option you could digitize documents and add to your digital case folder.
November 17th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
I love the idea of going paperless but I haven’t figured out how to go to court hearings without a paper document. For example, here in North Carolina we don’t have efiling yet. Most courtrooms do not have computers and monitors that you can hook up to your own computer to share documents like you might find in federal court.
1. How do you handle going to court for a motion hearing? I typically have my brief and case law printed and yes, three additional copies for other attorneys and the judge.
2. It is almost weekly that a judge will say I don’t have that document in the court file can you hand one up. What do you do if you only have an ipad with you?
I would love to hear how someone else handles these issues?