Law firms have much to gain with backfile scanning, document management

By their very nature, law firms of all shapes and sizes will have to handle massive quantities of paper, and often even have to keep them on file, physically, going forward. However, despite the legal requirement many states have in place for firms to keep physical documentation, it's also critical for firm employees to be able to find information in those files as quickly and easily as possible. That's where backfile scanning and ongoing use of document management software comes in.

Law firms will, of course, probably never be completely paperless, but there's a difference between eliminating paper and still making a lot of behind-the-scenes legal work run more smoothly, according to the American Bar Association Journal. With a document management system, a lot of the grunt work that goes into the legal profession – digging through files, making sure the right people have access to the right documents exactly when they need it and so on – can be reduced or altogether eliminated.

How does it work?
By scanning potentially decades' worth of documents into a digital platform that's easily searchable, the need to go down into storage and dig through boxes of documents to find a few individual documents is eliminated, and that information can be set up with robotic process automation to go right to the people who are supposed to see it, more or less on-demand, the report said. Such a system also helps with document portability because lawyers will be able to pull up information on a device such as a laptop or smartphone even when they're working remotely.

This may also be helpful when it comes to the need to scan documents into such a system using remote capture.

Keeping up with the Joneses
The fact is that many in the legal profession have already begun this process, allowing them to function more efficiently than they used to, according to Law Technology Today. This is true not only when it comes to day-to-day legal work, but also the ongoing costs of running a business. After all, paper and toner is a huge expense for any legal firm, and whatever efforts they can undertake to reduce those issues will likely offer significant savings.