Increasing productivity in the legal industry has been a mantra
for years. Much has been written about law office automation,
attempts to generate less paper through automation and scanning,
Ross Kodner’s concept of the "PaperLess" office, and so on. However,
many, if not most, attempts at law office automation have succeeded
only to a very partial degree when they have not failed utterly. On
the face of it, this might appear very surprising since when the
appropriate technology and adequate hardware are adopted,
productivity increases and the corresponding Return On Investment (ROI)
are both rapid and substantial (not to say spectacular). Twenty
years ago, the standard relation of attorneys to assistants was 1:1.
Today, it is closer to 2:1 or even 3:1 in many firms.
The Best
Laid Plans...
There are several broad reasons why plans to automate and
increase productivity never get off the ground:
- Generalized fear of/reluctance to change. Many firms still use
their computers as glorified typewriters: "We’ve always done it
this way" is an attitude that will lead a firm into a descending
spiral.
- Reluctance to commit the necessary resources, both financial
and in terms of time. "I can’t afford it" and "I don’t have the
time" are both self-defeating, and virtually never true. After
all, if you can save a half hour a day, how can it possibly be
that you "don’t have time" to save 125 hours a year? Similarly,
how can a firm "not afford" to capture 10-15% more billable hours
per attorney per year? For a single attorney billing 1,500 hours a
year at $200 an hour, this represents $30-45,000 more in billings
per year.
Lack of adequate planning and preparation. You need an overall
plan for what you want to do, as well as an implementation and
training plan.
Finally, there some physical limitations and constraints that
are important to take into account when trying to go over to
scanning more and using less paper. These frequently limit
implementation.
How to Make it Work
Vendors often push "new functionality" without regard to the
actual needs or workflow of the firm. A good example of this is
copier vendors who have become very aggressive at pushing copiers
with scanning functions built in. To make an automation plan that
will work you should start not from a particular program or
function, but from an analysis of your needs. Make some lists: what
are the half-dozen things that you would like the firm to be able to
do that you cannot do at present? What are the half-dozen things
that really annoy you about your current technology? What are the
main bottlenecks in your current workflow (length of time to locate
documents? Filing paper?)? What are the processes that currently
work well for you (so that you can be sure to keep them)?
Lastly, since it is difficult to even be aware of procedures that
could be made more efficient, ask colleagues how they deal with
particular issues. You may want to consider subscribing to a
specialized listserv such as Technolawyer.com or hiring a consultant
to draw up a technology plan. A consultant specializing in law firms
is likely to have seen a variety of successes (or failures) in
several hundred firms of varying sizes and practice specialties and
therefore be in a position to make suggestions applicable to your
specific needs.
Once you have done this, you need to match your needs to the
hardware and software available to meet them.
What Do You Need?
Typically, legal automation deals with the following areas:
Gathering all the information concerning a matter into a
single electronic "place," thus substantially reducing the number
of times you need to fetch a physical file and speeding up
response time to requests or the need to gather information. Any
time I hear someone say "let me get the file," I know that their
practice can be substantially improved in this area. Practice
management software such as Amicus Attorney or Time Matters does
this.
Practice management software should link to time and billing /
accounting software to eliminate double entry of time. The
combination of these two will substantially increase the amount of
billable hours you capture (as always, with the caveat that
the software is used systematically). Many firms use QuickBooks or
Timeslips. PC Law is an integrated time and billing and accounting
package that will do both, with considerable increase in
efficiency.
Note that virtually all software makers are energetically adding
features in an effort to "capture the desktop," that is, to be the
main program that is open all the time. Time Matters (which has just
been acquired by LexisNexis) recently added Billing Matters (and
"Accounting Matters" is no doubt on the horizon) and PC Law will
likely expand its "practice management" functionality in the near
future.
The ability to automate the generation of repetitive documents
that are used over and over. This need is greatest in
transactional practices, but everyone does retainer letters,
rejection letters, referral letters, and so on. One of my trusts
and estates client has a system that will generate, for both
client and spouse, over 40 pages of basic Wills, Trust Agreements,
Living Wills, Power of Attorney, Appointment of Health Care Agent
and Designation of Guardians and Conservators – assuming that
information has already been entered into his system. Once
that has been done, generating the documents takes under 2
minutes. Then the attorney is free to do the "interesting" part -
the special provisions, exceptions etc. that are unique to that
client. This sort of document assembly can be done through
templates and merge files, or with specialized programs such as
HotDocs or GhostFill, sometimes referred to as "merge documents on
steroids."
The ability to manage all the documents the firm produces and
receives, including organizing and searching through them. Perhaps
most importantly, to enforce a system that prevents human error in
storing and locating documents. This is document management
software. For small and medium size firms, the best option here is
Worldox, although programs such as Time Matters have basic
document management functionality built in.
Increasingly, firms also wish to scan incoming documents,
transcripts, or forms and make them part of the document
repository. Making transcripts available electronically can vastly
reduce the extremely time-consuming process of preparing
deposition digests for example.
Specialty practices frequently require specialty software:
closing software for real estate; software to calculate income and
support arrangements for family law practices, trial preparation
and litigation support software, and so on.
Finally, many lawyers have particular utility programs that
they swear by: advanced cell phones, Blueberrys, outlining
software, "instant macro" programs such as Active Words, and so
on.
Scanning Documents
Documents that are produced in-house are relatively easy to
manage since they already exist in electronic format. However, paper
documents have traditionally posed a problem. In addition, many
on-line forms are now available primarily in Adobe Acrobat format,
and some federal courts are requiring that documents be submitted in
Acrobat format in addition to a traditional word processing format.
What is the best way to deal with these issues?
Faster PCs and better software have made scanning documents much
more feasible than in the past. However, there are still several
hurdles that have to be overcome before you have a solution that
will actually work.
The first issue is workflow. Who scans documents, when, where and
how?
For the daily scan of incoming documents, letters, etc., the most
efficient way to do it is to have the person who opens the mail scan
everything that is needed. Visoneer makes an excellent line of
relatively inexpensive scanners that will go scan to 20
pages/minute. The Fujitsu line also has a good reputation and faster
models.
For larger scans, you may be tempted by high-speed
copier/scanners. However, there is frequently a significant workflow
issue issue here. A person goes to the copier, switches it over to
scan mode, goes back to their desk to scan. When they are done, they
go back to the copier a second time, remove the documents, and
re-set the machine to copy. Some of the newer/larger machines do the
scanning to a hard drive in the copier, and the scan can be
retrieved later. If this is not the case, I recommend putting a
dedicated scanning PC next to the copier so that everything can be
done in a single step (this also reduces the number of licenses you
have to buy for scanning/ OCR software).
Planning, Planning, Planning
Everyone is familiar with the "putting out brush fires" model of
implementation. You need an overall plan, even if you do not intend
to implement all of it right away. Ideally, you should develop a
multi-year technology plan, including a (gasp!) budget, that
provides for replacing about a third of your equipment every year.
The IRS to the contrary notwithstanding, the useful lifespan of most
computers is about three years.
If you are implementing multiple pieces (document management,
practice management, scanning), decide on what order and pace to
implement them. Ideally, you want to give people a chance to get
used to each new piece before implementing the next one, so that
they don’t get overloaded. Be sure to include a major piece of the
budget for training. Lack of training will lead (at best) to
seriously underutilization of programs you implement and can lead to
a complete failure of the implementation.
