Guest Editor: Nancy N. Grekin, McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP, 5 Waterfront Plaza, 4th Floor, 500 Ala Moana Boulevard, Honolulu, HI 96813-4920, ngrekin@m4law.com.

Technology—Property provides information on current technology and microcomputer software of interest in the real property area. The editors of Probate & Property welcome information and suggestions from readers.

 

Stop Wasting Billable Time—Go Paperless

If you have been to a legal technology show recently, you probably heard presentations suggesting an office can go completely paperless by scanning every document it receives and saving and storing them as image files. That probably seemed impossible from a practical standpoint, because more staff would have to be hired, expensive high-speed scanners would have to be purchased, and complex image management programs would have to be learned. The good news is that an office can go paperless easily at minimal cost and without additional staff.

Once you adopt a paperless strategy, you will never go back. Liberation from stacks of paper will engender only a desire to be even more paperless. The author confesses to being a transactional attorney who is aiming this article at fellow transactional attorneys in solo practices or small firms. Unlike litigators who promote paperless practice, transactional attorneys do not produce or receive massive court pleadings, depositions, or exhibits in paper form. The author assumes that the reader’s document delivery is now primarily by e-mail attachment.

To become more paperless, start with

 

• a scanner,

• an Internet fax account,

• Adobe Acrobat, eCopy Desktop, and/or PaperPort to manage images, and

• a big hard drive and careful backup procedures and equipment.

 

Can you imagine how it would feel to have little or no paper in the file? Maybe you cannot give up being able to touch and look at a paper document. But think about how much time is spent looking for documents. An hour a day? Assume a lawyer works 225 days a year and his or her hourly rate is $225. That lawyer is losing more than $50,000 per year in billable time looking for paper! For most lawyers, finding documents in paper files is (or was) a constant nightmare. Now think about how much time that lawyer’s staff spends filing and organizing paper files. Again that lawyer is wasting a lot of staff time and resources dealing with paper that could be put to much better use turning out work and generating billings. By adopting paperless strategies and storing e-mail and documents in electronic folders, searchable documents will be at your fingertips, and you and your secretary can stop wasting so much valuable time filing and looking for them.

Scanners

The first step to going paperless is to acquire a scanner. Scanners range in price from under $100 to thousands of dollars, but even a relatively inexpensive scanner can help a lawyer become significantly more paperless. The author is a fan of the Visioneer brand of scanners because they are comparatively inexpensive relative to their features.

The author uses a Visioneer Strobe Pro, a sheetfed scanner about the size of a roll of aluminum foil. Prices for the Visioneer Strobe Pro range from only $199 to $399. The advantage of a sheet fed scanner is that it is small enough to fit on a corner of your desk and be available for immediate scanning. The disadvantage is that it is sheetfed, allowing only one page to be scanned at a time, so it is not appropriate for big scanning jobs.

What makes Visioneer scanners incredibly useful is their software (which is supported by other scanners as well). The program is called PaperPort. When a document is scanned, the program opens and the scanned document appears on the PaperPort desktop as a PDF file. From the PaperPort desktop the PDF file can be dragged to an icon for a program that handles text or images, and the program will either convert the document to that format or, in the case of a fax or e-mail program, open that program and either fax or e-mail it. The image files can be saved to folders on your desktop, to the computer’s local hard drive, or to the network, and they can be converted to JPEG, GIF, or bitmap image formats. The PaperPort desktop looks like this:

To add text from a hardcopy document to a word processing file, scan the page and convert it to a Word or WordPerfect file using PaperPort’s built-in optical character recognition (OCR) software. The user can print to the PaperPort desktop from any program with a print command, where it can be converted to a file in PDF format or, using OCR, to a word processing document by simply dragging it to the program icon or the PaperPort desktop. With this capability, you will never have to send another fax, because any document can be printed or scanned to PaperPort and attached to an e-mail. Simply scan the document and drag it to the icon for your e-mail program. The e-mail client will open with the document attached as a PDF file to an e-mail message. Scan in your signature and insert it in a letter you send by e-mail on your letterhead that is digitized in Word. If you must fax, software or Internet fax (discussed below) is available, and you can fax a document scanned or printed to PaperPort directly from the PaperPort desktop.

PaperPort also has a form filler feature that recognizes lines on forms and allows the user to type on them. Print a form from the Internet to PaperPort, or scan it in, fill it out, and then fax or e-mail it from PaperPort.

A scanner with an automatic document feeder is helpful for larger scanning jobs. Companies that make copiers also makes scanners, and sophisticated, high-speed machines are available that will copy, e-mail, fax, and scan. If your practice calls for a reasonably priced, but fairly high speed, scanner with an automatic document feeder, check out the Visioneer 9450, 9650, or 9750 scanners, which range in price from $299 to $899. The top of the line Strobe Pro or Visioneer scanners cost approximately $1,300 and provide an enormous amount of paperless capability.

Image Management

Getting document images onto your computer is relatively easy, but you will also need a program to manage the images. The dominant image management program is Adobe Acrobat (not to be confused with the free Adobe Reader). Acrobat enables the user to create, edit, search, notate, and save PDFs. Adobe now produces several different levels of Acrobat, summarized in the table on page 64.

PDF documents come in two flavors. A document that has been scanned to a PDF file, or converted to a PDF file from a scan, is a pure image file. It is a picture of the text in a document. A document that is printed to a PDF file from a word processing program is an “image on text” file. Acrobat “sees” the text behind the image and allows the user to select text, to paste it back into a word processing file, and to search the text.

The latest version of Adobe Acrobat has unique features. One permits a user to save the entire contents of an Outlook mailbox as a PDF file. If the user organizes and retains his or her e-mail by deal or client, then Acrobat can create a paperless archive of all the e-mail received regarding a deal or from a particular client. PDF documents can be annotated with notes and bookmarks and PDF documents created by printing from a program to PDF can be searched. “Smart forms” that can be filled out on the user’s computer using Adobe Reader or Acrobat also can be created.

The eCopy Desktop program is an interesting competitor of Adobe Acrobat. This program is much less expensive than Acrobat, but it allows the user to type anywhere on an image, unlike Acrobat, which requires the user to insert fields. The user can type in color and select fonts and font sizes. Graphics, such as lines and arrows, can be added to a page, and images can be easily erased from the page. (The only way to do this in Acrobat is to cover the image to be erased with a button and make the button appear white.) The program can also OCR an image that was printed to eCopy’s format to Word, Excel, ASCII, or HTML format. The eCopy Desktop program saves to PDF format. (It uses its own proprietary extension for the file name, which can be changed to PDF.) The user also can fax (using a fax program) or e-mail images directly from the eCopy Desktop program.

Paperless Fax

Facsimile transmission of documents is rapidly being replaced by e-mail transmission. Remember the early 1980s when faxes first became available? Lawyers thought they had died and gone to instant gratification heaven, because now it was possible to electronically deliver a document halfway around the world in seconds. But after more then two decades of faxing, many lawyers still use first generation equipment. That fading, curly thermal paper is a thing of the past, but sending or receiving a fax often is done in the old fashioned way with an expensive machine that takes up a lot of space and that demands a surprising amount of human intervention. Many lawyers still tell their secretaries to send a fax. The secretary must find the fax number, type or write a cover sheet, and take the document to the fax room. Staff must dial the number, feed the document into the machine, and then return the document and transmission receipt to the lawyer. Now, there is a better and entirely paperless way to fax!

Software Fax

Fax software has existed for many years. It allows users to send faxes directly from their computers by way of a fax server connected to a modem. Incoming faxes are received at the fax server at a “virtual” phone number assigned to each user and transmitted via e-mail to the user in TIFF or PDF format.

The most popular programs in use in law offices are WinFax and RightFax. Each user runs a client on his desktop that enables him to save fax numbers associated with names, create a custom fax cover sheet, and send faxes. The advantage of fax software is that the user has a paperless archive of all faxes sent and received. A fax machine is not needed, but a fax server with a modem and a phone line, or multiple phone lines, is required. What the user avoids is carting faxes around the office and devoting valuable staff time to sending and receiving them.

Internet Fax

There are now many Internet fax providers. The two most popular providers for law offices are eFax and MaxEmail. Both services are free if you only want to receive faxes. A premium account is needed to send faxes, but charges are moderate: $69 for a one-year account ($8.95 if paid monthly) and five cents a page to send a fax. Users are assigned virtual phone numbers associated with their e-mail addresses. Premium accounts allow the user to choose an area code, so the user can have a fax number in his or her own area. The free accounts do not allow choice of an area code, so it is likely the number will be in another area code.

Faxes are received as e-mail attachments and can be sent either from the fax service web site or directly from the user’s e-mail client by addressing an e-mail to faxnumber@maxemailsend.com. This means that a fax and an e-mail can be sent simultaneously to two recipients. Like software fax, the user has an archive of all faxes sent and received, not only on the user’s computer (if sent using the e-mail client), but also on the web site of the fax service. Fax numbers can be stored for easy access from the fax software, the web site of the provider, or in the e-mail client address book. Because faxes are sent over the Internet, there is no need to purchase new equipment or software and no long-distance charges are incurred. The software is available as a free download from these services when the user signs up.

Extranets

Extranets allow documents to be uploaded to either a third-party web site or a site located on the firm’s own servers running extranet software, and they provide password-protected access to the documents for clients. With these services, clients can be allowed to view, download, or edit documents drafted by the lawyer or scanned and uploaded. Most extranets also include calendaring, listserv, or chat capabilities; databases for contact information; and version control. When extranets are used to store documents, the need to e-mail documents, drafts, and black-lines is eliminated, and everyone involved in a matter has access to all documents in one place on the Internet.

The cost of third-party extranet services varies widely and extranet software, which runs on the firm’s own servers, can be very expensive. Most document management programs now offer an extranet module, so that the extranet can be integrated with the document management system. Many of these programs offer sophisticated document management capabilities through the extranet that can grant or deny access to documents or groups of documents to various users. Most charge by the number of users who access the system and require the end user to buy a license for each client to whom the firm allows access.

But, by using Yahoo Groups, this can be done for free. At http://groups.yahoo.com, an extranet site can be set up that allows the user to upload documents and maintain a database with contact information and a calendar and that includes a listserv with a message archive. The site is password protected, and each user can use his or her Yahoo login and password for access. The capabilities are not as sophisticated as the software for sale, but the price is right!

Conclusion

With a minimal expenditure, you can purchase an enormous amount of paperless capacity and begin billing the time you and your staff now spend filing and finding paper documents. Remember Hurricane Katrina? Anyone who was paperless could have been back in business in a flash (assuming good electronic data backup systems).

There is much more to going paperless than space permits here. For example:

 

• Transactional lawyers probably have an office full of closing binders, but creating electronic closing binders on CDs is easy. For more information, visit www.clenow.net/rppt/publications/edirt/2004/2/Grekin.pdf.

• Stop printing and filing all the drafts and black-lines you receive in a transaction. Simply store them on your computer (but make sure to use good version control). Then, when the deal is done, copy them to a CD and use Adobe Acrobat to print the e-mail folder or mailbox with messages sent and received in the deal to a PDF file and copy that to the CD, as well.

 

Make it a goal for 2006 to start saving valuable billable and staff time by being more paperless. The expenditure in hardware and software will quickly pay for itself.