We are 100% paperless and we have been since 2003.  That means if you call from Rio requesting a copy of a case file, you can expect to receive it in about one hour.  All of our case files are electronic with offsite backup which speeds our work and results in your case being filed faster.  If files are too large to e-mail, we instantly set up a password protected portal for you to download one page, or entire case files for one hundred employees.

We do not lose documents because no one ever has the “only copy.” What if your law firm suffers a fire? Theft? A natural disaster? What assurance do you have that your critical files and data will be safe? If our offices are completely destroyed, we have a complete offsite backup of every single document and every single file available in minutes.  And paperless also saves enormous quantities of paper, toner, electricity and physical space.

According to Thomas Kostigen at MarketWatch,

"Over the course of a year, manufacturing the paper we use at work requires 68 million trees and 82 billion gallons of water, or more than 1,000 gallons of water per worker."

And there are real profit-based reasons for going paperless.  The fact is that paper costs money, and so does toner, onsite file storage, archived offsite file storage, and lost time while employees hunt down documents and files.  Imagine if you could seach for a specific file name from more than 100,000 client files and have your result in less than one second.

We Can Help You Go Paperless

Going paperless is not just about finding a good scaner and backup systems.  The process of using online electronic documents presents choices that you can either make consciously and in a planned way, or inadvertently as you go.  One way or another, those choices get made.  Going paperless raises important questions like:

• Which hardware and software to use to digitize analog documents?
• Should document password security be file, folder, or system based?
• Are the benefits of default OCR worth the increased file size and system resources?
• Should electronic files and folders be available over the local network, or online too?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of commercial services for online file storage and versioning like Dropbox as compared to an in-house solution like PHP-based Internet-served files and folders that you control?
• How can I manage offsite backups to ensure that I never face catastrophic document loss?

Going paperless is a lot cheaper and easier than most people think.  A good floor standing photocopier that copies at 80 pages per minute, weighs almost 1,000 pounds and costs $19,000, can be equaled or bested in performance by a 45 pound commercial scanner that will do 80 pages per minute duplex for $6,500.  And the consumables on the scanner cost about $175 per 200,000 pages.  For the copier?  Roughly $4,200 for toner and paper for 200,000 pages.  And this cost does not include lateral filing cabinets, folders, additional space for file storage and other paper-based expenses.

Give Us a Call

Call us, or drop us a note if you have questions about going paperless.  We'll be happy to offer some suggestions for free.  If you'd like more intense collaboration on a project, we can offer you a consulting package including a project manager who can assist you in developing and implementing a system at a reasonable price that you can have up and running within a few weeks.  The savings start the day you get started.

Do the environment, your customers and yourself a favor, go paperless!