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Your law office is not paperless?

You’re not alone. In many jurisdictions, the law does not allow a law office to go completely paperless. In areas where an office could go without paper, there’s also the issue of habit—we use paper because we always have used paper.

These challenges have not stopped some in the legal community from trying, however.

In Lincoln County, South Carolina, the circuit clerk is nearly complete with the court’s efforts to go paperless as much as the law allows, a move that has been under way since November.

Documents dating as far back as 1986 have all been scanned and entered into the court’s computerized system, complete with a backup, so nothing is lost if there is hardware failure.

Going paperless has reduced the court’s need for filing cabinets, folders and paper, according to Circuit Clerk Dustin Bairfield.

All court proceeding information will soon be filed electronically in the courthouse by the judges and district attorney, he noted in a recent Enquirer Herald article. "This will save paper and automatically back up information within five minutes of entry," said Bairfield.

There are many benefits of a paperless office, and the biggest reason for law offices is compliance: The need to keep around so many files and documents that take up a dramatic amount of space as the months go by.

A paperless or nearly paperless law office can save both space and money by taking these documents and making them digital.

A typical criminal case can result in roughly 4,000 pieces of paper. By going digital, the Lincoln County court has said it is saving between $8,000 and $20,000 in the budget yearly, in addition to the space savings.

One big issue with the paperless office is stemming the tide of incoming paper—a law office may stop its paper use, but that doesn’t mean clients will.

Putting a paperless office into practice means having the right tools to combat the onslaught of incoming paper. That means easy-to-use document scanners for legal assistants and paralegals, and a faxing solution that forgoes paper in favor of digital delivery.

One solution that law offices may want to look into is the new XMediusFAX Cloud solution offered by fax leader, Sagemcom (News - Alert). It is a fax-over-IP (FoIP) solution that lets firms send and receive faxes electronically, with incoming faxes routing automatically to the right attorney or legal assistant.

Many larger enterprises already have FoIP solutions in place, but the XMediusFAX Cloud solution can be leveraged by an organization of any size because there is no hardware to buy, as everything is in the cloud. It delivers the advanced routing, tracking and security of larger systems, but without the complexity or price.

So, while many law offices are still not paperless, there’s little reason why they should not be.