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Steps to Going Paperless
In general, The fast way (in a large law office) scanning
works like this:
1) A secretary receives all the mail and
then sorts it so that it goes to the proper departments (ie:
Civil, Comp or perhaps Comp Team #1, Comp Team #2, etc).
2) A legal secretary from a specific department
opens the mail and enters it in Case Activity either by pulling
the client card or more quickly by using the Mail Tracker.
This secretary decides if this piece of mail needs to be scanned.
if so, when entering a description of the mail in Case Activity
the secretary clicks the Scan button in the lower right corner
after entering the case activity description and a "Scan
Instruction Form" is printed. They then may specify what
is to be done with the correspondence after scanning (shred,
send to attorney, file, etc). A1-Law automatically prints
on the instruction sheet what to name the document (this is
the Number such as 83412-98).
The scan instruction sheet is then attached to the correspondence
and placed in a bin and sent off the scan department. The
legal secretary's job is complete and the scanning is delegated
to the mail room/scan department. The case activity entry
is now entered but the document is not yet scanned or attached
to that case activity entry.
3) Most scanner/copiers today will easily
scan at 50-60 pages / minute. Further, the scanner has a TCP/IP
port so it does not need to be attached to a computer. One
may program the scanner to automatically save all files in
a specific folder on the network (such as F:\data\ScannedDocuments
or some other folder. The scan department takes each correspondence
in the bin and knows what to name each Adobe Acrobat pdf file
by the Number on the Scan Instruction Form that the legal
secretary attached to that correspondence. The scan department
scans and names the document and the scanner automatically
saves all the documents in the ScannedDocuments folder. No
one in the mail room/scan department even needs to know how
to use a computer or ever needs to go into A1-Law.
4) Now we have a lot of filenames in the
ScannedDocuments Folder. The names might be names like 442-21
885-34 1243-51 61-14 etc. Now, at the end of each day or every
few days a system administrator goes into the Scan Tracker
in A1-Law and clicks the Transfer button and A1-Law automatically
copies and attaches all those documents into their proper
case in case activity for all those files. The Scan Tracker
can process approximately 100 documents in around 10 seconds.
We are done. The magic is complete.
5) It can be taken a step further but for
now we have been told from other offices doing this that they
can easily scan several hundred documents a day. Further,
there are far fewer mis-filings. Finally, some attorneys no
longer have a file clerk - in fact, in many situations they
don't even have a physical file at all! This leads us to #6
below.
6) From the Scan Tracker arises the A1-Law
Transfer Utility. This module (already in A1-Law) allows attorneys
to quickly (within 2-4 minutes) transfer all their open cases
to their laptop computer and then they no longer need to take
physical files to court. Since we are paperless with the Scan
Tracker, all we need is A1-Law on a laptop computer.
7) The Transfer Utility is currently a "one
way sync." Soon, it will be a "two way sync"
which will allow attorneys to work "offline" without
internet access and then sync their changes when they come
back to the office or sync them via Email or internet access.
Since internet access is not everywhere (ie: on a plane or
perhaps it is wireless and it's just not a fast connection)
the transfer utility allows one to see their entire case load
and the two way sync will allow one to make changes to the
data.
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