“perhaps my most favorite feature of an electronic law office is the ability to quickly and accurately search the content of all files to look for words, phrases, names, dates, and other important information.�
an electronic law office requires a commitment to using it for every document that enters the office. If your electronic file does not contain a document you need because your office does not consistently handle every document, then you cannot rely upon your sizeable investment into an electronic law office. For this reason, your staff needs to be savvy enough with electronic equipment to handle a learning curve for new electronic methods of dealing with paper. The transition to an electronic law office will necessarily involve growing pains, and you must be diligent to ensure that nothing goes overlooked during the transition period. My office kept both electronic and paper versions of every client file until all documents were scanned into the system. We hired a part-time employee to assist our office manager in maintaining both sets of files. Once the office staff became comfortable and diligent in using the system, we shifted away from traditional paper files containing copies of every document relating to a case and towards organized electronic files. For active cases, our electronic files contain correspondence, pleadings, and other non-evidentiary documents, while a traditional file cabinet houses original deposition transcripts and other evidence. Our closed files are stored electronically, which decreases the need for extensive physical storage of older paper files. Another factor in deciding whether you will implement an electronic law office is cost. Our firm of three attorneys was able to implement an electronic law office at a relatively modest cost because we did not need to add much to our existing infrastructure.
We already had a high-capacity multifunction machine for faxing, copying, scanning, and printing. We had to purchase a robust optical character recognition (OCR) software program, upgraded network switches for the computers to more quickly talk to each other, and larger, redundant hard drives to provide the needed storage capacity. Our last hard drive upgrade boosted our storage capacity to one terabyte (1TB), and we estimate this will meet our needs for two to three years. Larger firms dealing with more paper may find that more capitalintensive upgrades are needed. We do not use comprehensive document management systems such as Time Matters or Amicus because we do not want to be tied to proprietary systems and file formats that require upgrades every few years. If your firm uses case management software, you should confirm that such programs are compatible with the document scanning system you wish to implement. Before purchasing any new equipment or software, you should consult with a professional information technology specialist, preferably one with experience in the legal field, to determine what technology will adequately meet your needs for an appropriate length of time. Your circumstances may vary from ours, and a legal information technology specialist can tailor a solution to meet your specific needs. Once you make the decision to implement an electronic office, you must establish a strict protocol for your office staff and attorneys. Each document entering and leaving your office should be scanned before being placed into an attorney’s box,
onto the fax machine, or into an envelope. In our automated process, the scanner captures the image on each sheet of paper and transfers the images to a computer, where a program such as Adobe Capture 3.0 performs OCR on the images and saves them as an electronic document. I recommend that you choose a common document format so you do not become tied to an obsolete or proprietary format; the most common is the portable document format (.pdf) file type. The next step of the process requires a member of your office staff to save the electronic document to the appropriate location on a central file server using a descriptive filepath name. Much like the manila folders in your filing cabinets, your electronic files need a coherent organizational structure. Every one of our electronic client files is divided into several subfolders. For instance, each electronic client file will have a working papers subfolder for word processing documents, spreadsheets, and other
Nathan Price Chaney is a registered patent attorney with the Henry Law Firm in Fayetteville.
Vol. 43 No. 1/Winter 2008 The Arkansas Lawyer
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