Law practice’s have stayed in their comfort zone of dealing with paper documents. Years ago, this culture had no options to address the time and effort lost on the filing, storing, locating, and retrieving of physical documents. Today, these costs and delays are unacceptable. A paperless law office simplifies every facet of a document’s life cycle. The physical handling of a document is reduced to a simple scan and electronic filing process. Documents already in the electronic format are filed without being printed.

Workflow has been around since man has done any sort of ‘work’. Any process that takes place involves workflow. Whether that process is limited to a single individual or multiple people, a series of steps is completed to formulate the workflow process. Every firm has some sort of document workflow process in use.

Whether that document workflow consists of a client medical record, investigation report, email, snail mail, or other document, workflow of documents occurs every single day. Once the realization occurs regarding how often document workflow occurs each day, one begins to consider ways to improve and streamline the document workflow process so as to maximize time and cost savings.

The easiest way to implement electronic workflow is to select a software package that can mimic the way documents are currently routed physically.

Find any document, anywhere, any time.

Everyone at one time or another has gone on a paper hunt. Even for the most organized firm, searching for physical documents, especially those which have been misplaced or misfiled, can be a lengthy exercise in frustration. We all know how the case of a missing document tends to raise its ugly head when you are down to the wire on a deadline. Going paperless dramatically decreases the amount of time spent locating and retrieving documents, both current and archived. There are three basic types of searches.

Structural Search

Structural search is the method most closely related to the file cabinet, file folder approach because it relies on a consistent, hierarchical and controlled structure for storing documents. The best systems emulate the physical filing world. When someone calls with an inquiry about a case, the user logs in to the case cabinet, finds and opens the case folder, identifies the required document and even emails, faxes or prints the document while the caller is still on the phone.

Keyword and Document Title Search

An EDMS allows users to index documents with a title and keywords. Those words can be entered later in a search field and a list of documents associated with these words will be presented. The more words associated with a document the more specific the searches that can be performed. The fewer words, the more likely you would receive a longer list of documents returned by the search. So if someone needs to find all insurance documents for Farmers Insurance in all case folders, this is simple to do with a keyword search. Unique words in a document title or keyword can be used to produce very narrow searches. For example, searching for a specific invoice number from a specific vendor in the title of a document could result in immediately locating a single document.

Full Text Search

Full Text Search (FTS) is yet another way to search for a document. FTS involves looking for a document based on a word or phrase that is contained within. For example, if a user needs to find all documents which contain the phrase ‘lawsuit’, FTS would be very useful.

To learn more about the convenience of Cabinet Safe technology, contact MCC’s Integrated Solutions Division today for a demonstration and consult.