How to Create and Run a Paperless Law Office in 2018

How to Get to a Paperless Law Office in 2018

888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com

Meet your Presenters

Dennis Dimka

Ivy B. Grey

Nefra MacDonald


Agenda

1. Why go Paperless? 2. Paperless Environment Steps 3. The Cloud 4. Paperless Naming Conventions 5. Other Paperless Tools and

Technology


Why Go Paperless?


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


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.


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


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!)


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.


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.


Save Time and MoneyGoing paperless will definitely save you space and money.

• Saving wasted time looking for hardcopy documents

• Physical storage costs money!

• Avoid costs of losing documents


How to Go Paperless (in 5 steps)


Implement a Document Management SystemLaw 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.


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


Outline and Document Your Process

Define and document your process for all document intake.


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.


Back-fill DocumentsElectronic 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.


The Cloud is Your Ally!


Benefits of the Cloud

1. More Reliable

2. More Secure

3. More Accessible

4. More Scalable

5. Easier to Implement

6. More Economical


Developing Your Own File Naming Conventions


Naming ConventionsWhat 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.


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.


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.


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?


Minimum Elements

• Date Element: YYYYMMDD

• Document Type Element: MSJ, Memo, Ltr, APA, Lease, etc.

• Description Element: Document’s contents or purpose

• Version Control Element


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.


Must-Have Tools for a Paperless Law Office



Scanner


Backup System


Practice Management Software

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Electronic Invoicing and Payment Processing


Additional Resources



Charts, Checklists, case studies and more: UptimeLegalWorks.com



https://www.rocketmatter.com/law-firm-management-resources/

Thank You!Ivy B. Grey | [email protected]

Dennis Dimka | [email protected] Nefra MacDonald | [email protected]