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The Paper-to-Digital Law Firm

BY Steve Irons
November 30, 2014

Even though the costs and inefficiencies of paper records are an obvious strain on the law firm business model, law firms struggle with less-paper initiatives for one key reason: according to ILTA members informally surveyed in over 20 cities domestically, about half of today's attorneys would still prefer to work with paper, even if the entire file is digitally available from the DMS.

This is why a law firm's paper-to-digital transformation requires more than adopting a scanning technology: it requires best practice disciplines and change management initiatives attuned to the unique culture of that law practice.

When a law firm determines it wants to get serious about scanning, it generally has an initial and a long term objective. For long term objectives, we hear aggressive ambitions to 'Go paperless' in the practice areas or 'Eliminate offsite records storage.' Initial objectives are more grounded in practicality, such as 'Start scanning closed matters instead of sending them offsite to records storage' or 'Start scanning all incoming paper for the IP Practice Group.'

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