How to Create and Run a Paperless Law Office in 2018
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The document outlines the benefits and steps to transition to a paperless law office, emphasizing improved organization, efficiency, and security. Key steps include implementing a document management system, integrating scanners, training staff, and developing consistent naming conventions. The advantages of a paperless office also include increased mobility, better client service, and potential cost savings.
How to Create and Run a Paperless Law Office in 2018
- 1. How to Get to a Paperless Law Office in 2018
- 2. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Meet your Presenters Dennis Dimka Ivy B. Grey Nefra MacDonald
- 3. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Agenda 1. Why go Paperless? 2. Paperless Environment Steps 3. The Cloud 4. Paperless Naming Conventions 5. Other Paperless Tools and Technology
- 5. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Organization and Efficiency • Hardcopy documents - Difficult to keep organized. • Spread over multiple file cabinets, boxes and locations. • Not quickly and easily retrievable: • Time-consuming to find • Maybe lost or misfiled • Paperless System: • Enforces uniform organization across the firm • Maintain consistency in filing/categorization • Makes finding documents quick and easy
- 6. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Search • Searching hardcopy/paper files is slow and full of human error. • With a paperless law firm you can: • Search across all documents (including previous versions) – in an instant. • Search across tens of thousands of pages • Find any document with a specific keyword or phrase. • Find all documents of a certain type – instantly. • Imagine searching your firm’s entire repository as easily as a Google search • Bonus: Search across documents and email within your firm.
- 7. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Increased Mobility • The practice of law is an increasingly mobile profession. • Going paperless gives your firm the ability to work anytime, anywhere. • The office • From home • The courthouse • Client sites • While traveling
- 8. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Security and Disaster Recovery • Hardcopy / paper files are vulnerable to significant threats: • Natural disasters – hurricane, tornado, earthquake • Building disaster – fire, flood, damage to building • Going paperless (with the right system) – provides safety and security • Even if your office is destroyed – your client documents are safe and secure • Better yet: With the Cloud, data is stored in a highly- redundant data center. (more on this later!)
- 9. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Sharing and Collaboration • Going Paperless centralizes your firm’s documents • Documents are easily shared with: • Members of your firm • Remote Offices • Employees who work from home • Outside Attorneys / Of Counsel Paper-only documents prohibit the ability to share outside of your physical office.
- 10. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Clients Expect It Today, a client expects that their attorney to be able to: • Quickly pull up documents they’ve sent you. • Share and send documents as necessary. • Have access to relevant information even if you’re not in the office. • Safely store and protect their information.
- 11. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Save Time and Money Going paperless will definitely save you space and money. • Saving wasted time looking for hardcopy documents • Physical storage costs money! • Avoid costs of losing documents
- 12. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com How to Go Paperless (in 5 steps)
- 13. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Implement a Document Management System Law Firm DMS = Digital Hub of your paperless law firm. • Your DMS will serve as: • Warehouse – store documents (and email) • Engine – make documents findable, relevant and useful Matter-centricity. • Store documents by matter. • Enforce structure and organization (vs. wild-west of folders). • All documents, email and other content – stored together within a matter.
- 14. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Integrate Scanners and Fax • Implement Scanners Firm-Wide • Central, big multifunctions (Kyocera, Konica-Minolta, Dell) • Personal Scanners (Fujitsu ScanSnap) • Implement Electronic Fax • Immediately turns faxes into electronic documents • Services including eFax, MaxEmail
- 15. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Outline and Document Your Process Define and document your process for all document intake.
- 16. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Train Your Entire Team • Now that you have written policy – train the entire team. • Educate them on why, not just what and how. (Buy-in) • Keep your paperless policy simple – so its easy to follow. • A good Document Management System is intuitive, making training easy. • A good DMS provider will include good, initial training and ongoing support.
- 17. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Back-fill Documents Electronic Documents • Good DMS software provider will migrate/ingest your legacy documents for you. • Import from computers, servers, other software applications and databases. Paper Documents • Scan every document > OCR > Save to DMS > File Under Matter. • Manual, but necessary. • Have the whole firm chip in. (Pizza never hurts.) • If overwhelming: Start with only Open or Recent matters.
- 18. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com The Cloud is Your Ally!
- 19. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Benefits of the Cloud 1. More Reliable 2. More Secure 3. More Accessible 4. More Scalable 5. Easier to Implement 6. More Economical
- 20. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Developing Your Own File Naming Conventions
- 21. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Naming Conventions What Is It? • Rules for naming the individual documents and files that you create, receive, and store. Why Start Here? • Uniform naming allows fast and reliable file retrieval. • Immediately benefits workflow. • Provides strong foundation for next-level paperless efforts.
- 22. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Customized, Thoughtful Planning • Your scheme depends on your practice and your firm. • Structure must be uniform and names must be unique. • Flexible rules allows for custom design. • Design reflects “how you think” about your documents. • Customized solutions encourage broad adoption and strict adherence.
- 23. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Don’t Do Too Much • All-encompassing schemes are unwieldy. • Overly strict schemes discourage adoption and adherence to the scheme. • Overuse of abbreviations and acronyms can lead to unintelligible alphabet soup that makes it hard to find anything. • Excessively reducing or limiting information can also make it hard to find a document.
- 24. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Creating Your Plan • What types of workflows exist in your firm? • Who are your clients? • What types of work do you do? • How many folders and sub-folders will you consistently use? • How many acronyms and abbreviations will you remember and consistently use?
- 25. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Minimum Elements • Date Element: YYYYMMDD • Document Type Element: MSJ, Memo, Ltr, APA, Lease, etc. • Description Element: Document’s contents or purpose • Version Control Element
- 26. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Tips for Success • Keep file names short, but meaningful. • Use CamelCase or underscores as an element delimiter. • Lead with date for your file name (YYYYMMDD). • Order elements according to search logic. • Use leading zeroes in numbers in file names. • Plan for inevitable filing mistakes and errors.
- 27. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Must-Have Tools for a Paperless Law Office
- 31. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Practice Management Software th
- 33. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Electronic Invoicing and Payment Processing
- 35. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Additional Resources Charts, Checklists, case studies and more: UptimeLegalWorks.com
- 37. Thank You!Ivy B. Grey | ivy@intelligentediting.com Dennis Dimka | dennis.dimka@uptimelegal.com Nefra MacDonald | nefra@rocketmatter.com