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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
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
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Why Go Paperless?
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
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.
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
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!)
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.
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.
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
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
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
How to Go Paperless (in 5 steps)
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
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.
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
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Outline and Document Your Process
Define and document your process for all document intake.
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.
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
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.
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
The Cloud is Your Ally!
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
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Developing Your Own File Naming Conventions
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Must-Have Tools for a Paperless Law Office
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Scanner
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Backup System
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Practice Management Software
th
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Electronic Invoicing and Payment Processing
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Additional Resources
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Additional Resources
Charts, Checklists, case studies and more: UptimeLegalWorks.com
888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com
Additional Resources
https://www.rocketmatter.com/law-firm-management-resources/
Thank You!Ivy B. Grey | [email protected]
Dennis Dimka | [email protected] Nefra MacDonald | [email protected]