Scissors, rock, paper—cutting the paper out of your office
Despite the wide use of e-mail, scanning and online research, the amount of paper that law firms use has not seemed to have decreased much in recent years. What tools are available to cull the stacks of paper? The ABA has several resources to use as starting points.
Even with the green movement picking up steam, lawyers can be creatures of habit and for many, change is hard. Also, as Nancy N. Grekin points out in her presentation, “The Paperless Office: The Electronic Transaction,” there are issues surrounding the storage of documents electronically. First is organization. Rather than a hard copy filing system, the computer can serve as an electronic filing cabinet. In order to keep some semblance of order, it's helpful to adopt a naming convention for files. This may also help identify documents when sharing them.
Click here to view Grekin's Powerpoint presentation for additional pointers that include considerations on how to bill when producing automated documents. In addition, Internet faxing and scanning capabilities are covered.
The use of scanners is also discussed in David L. Masters' article, “Setting Up the Paperless Office.” Inexpensive flatbed scanners, Masters states, can be utilized for books but are cumbersome and slow when it comes to multiple pages. “The best model is a scanner that combines the benefits of flatbed and sheet-fed models.”
Turning to the issue of electronic storage, Masters stresses that daily back ups of electronic information are critical. Test the back-ups occasionally to make sure they can be accessed and that files are actually being recorded; keep one set of up-to-date back ups off-site, continues Masters.
