Back in May at the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog, there was a discussion about paperless law offices that began with this post: "Do Away With Paper Entirely? Not Me." There were lots of comments, which was nice, but no one convinced me that I should be scanning every piece of mail that comes into the office--mail that includes stacks of medical records and bigger stacks of pleadings I receive mostly because everyone on a lengthy service list gets them.
Since then, there was a good explanation by Ernest Svenson of how a paperless office can be organized in "Managing an electronic case file." There's a link within the post to some presentation notes on the same topic, titled "Organizing Cases Electronically" (pdf).
It's good information. I've added it to the mix, although I can't say it changed my mind. So much of what comes into my law office just isn't necessary to have stored on a computer. As long as I can find the paper versions of the specific medical records and pleadings on the few days I'll need them, I'll be happy; I don't need the additional distraction of scanning everything and making sure the resulting computer files get into the right folders.
As I said before, however, I'm probably just hopelessly backwards, living in regretful ignorance of how I could be saving time the "modern way."
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