I’m speaking in New York in three weeks on the topic Getting Paper Out of the (Attorney’s) Office, as part of a two-person panel at the LegalTech Conference and trade show.
Below are the main points I’m currently looking at for my part of the discussion. I’d love to hear from folks who have additional or different ideas.
- Use workflow systems to route work throughout the office
- Optimize the processes behind them. Don’t automate broken processes (Steven’s First Rule of IT).
- Reconsider “standard procedures” — should they really be standards?
- Look to Lean Six Sigma to reduce waste and non-value-added activities.
- Use scan-on-demand when users request paper records from storage (which at least gets the paper into cheap storage space and over time will obviate those paper records)
- Send documents to clients via PDF or Word (or equivalents).
- Invoices, too: if clients don’t have electronic invoicing, don’t send them paper that they can lose track of.
- Get dual monitors, or an extra monitor in parallel with your widescreen laptop, to read large documents comfortably on screen
- Use Kindle, Nook, smartphones, etc. to read documents during commute time (this is in New York, where most commuting is by means other than driving yourself; obviously, this is a very bad idea — but becoming unfortunately common — when you’re driving!)
Suggestions welcome. Thanks.
