The Practical Paperless Office - January 2008 - Technology in the Law Practice
| Publication year | 2008 |
| Pages | 55 |
2008, January, Pg. 55. The Practical Paperless Office - January 2008 - Technology in the Law Practice
January 2008
Vol. 37, No. 1 [Page 55]
Technology in the Law Practice
The Practical Paperless Office
by Garry R. Appel
This Department welcomes submissions of articles and article topics of a practical nature that do not advocate a position or promote a product. For more information about the Department guidelines or to submit an article or topic suggestion, please contact one of the following Department editors: Jennifer L. Rice - (970) 494-1700, ricelawjr@earthlink.net; or Phil J. Shuey - (303) 680-2595, shuey_p@comcast.net.
Articles that appear in this Department do not necessarily reflect the official position of The Colorado Lawyer or the CBA, and the publication of these articles does not constitute any recommendation or endorsement of the goods or services mentioned herein.
Garry R. Appel is a partner with the Denver law firm of Appel and Lucas P.C., concentrating on business bankruptcy and business litigation in state and federal courts - (303) 297-9899, appelg@appellucas.com.
Modified from an earlier version, which appeared in Trial Talk.(r)
My grandfather, Walter Appel, graduated from the University of Colorado Law School in 1902 and set up practice with his classmate Ira Rothgerber. In their office, they prepared the usual documents for lawyers of the day - deeds, contracts, wills, and pleadings. Although the practical commercial typewriter had debuted in the 1870s, Rothgerber & Appel didn't have one in 1902; they were too expensive. Instead, all of the documents they produced were handwritten with another new piece of technology, invented only eighteen years earlier by Lewis Waterman: the fountain pen. If they needed to copy a document, either one they produced or one received from someone else, the copy was made by re-writing the document. Small wonder that pleadings and contracts of the day tended toward brevity.
My father, Robert Appel, began practicing law at Rothgerber & Appel in 1950. By that time, the firm had acquired a number of manual typewriters. (Electric typewriters were still fifteen years away.) At this time, documents the firm created could be reproduced by sandwiching carbon paper between sheets of paper. However, the number of copies that could be made that way was limited, and copies of documents the firm received were made by re-typing the document.
By the time I graduated from law school in 1978 and began practicing law, that same law office had changed dramatically. Xerox(r) had introduced the photocopier, which had come into wide use in the mid-1960s. Copiers allowed us to make an infinite number of copies, both of documents we created in the office and those that were sent to us. When fax machines came into wide use in the late 1970s, we could instantaneously deliver documents from one machine to another, anywhere in the world. However, office computers and desktop printers, which today are taken for granted, wouldn't be introduced until the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s, e-mail had become commonplace as a method of communicating, both among other lawyers and among lawyers and clients.
In my grandfather's law office, all information that was important for a client's case could reliably be expected to be in paper form. Therefore, it made sense to organize that client information into paper client files. Litigated matters were organized into sub-files for pleadings, correspondence, notes, documents, and legal research. Not much had changed fifty years later in my father's day. Information still came into and left the office in paper form, and it still made sense to store the paper documents that contained that information in paper client files.
Today, everything has changed. Although lawyers still create and receive paper documents, most information is transmitted in electronic form. Pleadings are filed and received electronically; communication takes place by e-mail; and information, such as legal research, is gathered over the Internet. As a result, storing client information in paper files, as our predecessors did for more than a century, is no longer practical. The obvious alternative is to store all client documents electronically.
After spending the greater part of the last decade studying how businesses, including law firms, and their employees work, I have developed a system of steps that any business can implement to make the transition from ineffective paper files to electronic storage. The system doesn't eliminate paper, because, at least for a while, paper will continue to be with us. Instead, it recognizes that paper documents exist and provides a method for controlling the paper. Paper documents are converted to electronic documents and then moved offsite, and all of the electronic documents are integrated into a single filing system. I call this system the Practical Paperless Office. This article summarizes the main steps in the process.(fn1)
Managing Paper Flow
A "To Be Scanned Box" is an effective tool to use as the front end of the paper flow process. Every scrap of paper coming into the office should be put in the To Be Scanned Box and everything in the To Be Scanned Box should get scanned. This rule should apply to mail, hand deliveries, faxes (unless your office delivers them electronically to the desktop), documents created or received by attorneys while in or out of the office (such as handwritten notes), and any other piece of paper that comes into the office...
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