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Introduction

Scanning is no longer a technology in its infancy and has matured to the point that it is reliablefor everyday use. Businesses throughout the United States use existing scanning technology on adaily basis to convert paper documents into electronic files. Scanning is a major component ofthe paperless office, as a healthy percentage of daily communication and evidence is stillreceived in paper format. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, the legal profession has beenslow to adopt scanning technology even when it can result in positive improvements inefficiency and to the firm's economic bottom line. However, that appears to be changing.

In recent years a trend has emerged for law firms, large and small, to move toward a morepaperless environment. In addition to it being “green” and affording the firm cost savings, itmakes information easily retrievable to all users if documents are stored electronically oncentralized media, such as a server. From an operational efficiency standpoint, scanning makessense as the amount of paper in the practice of law continues to grow. This growing burden ofpaper must be reviewed, sorted and stored for later retrieval. Dealing with all this paper is labor-intensiveand subject to the vagaries inherent whenever humans are entered into the process.

Experience has demonstrated that the more often paper is handled the greater the risk that it willbe damaged, misplaced or misfiled. Scanning inbound documents decreases these risks as thepaper handling is reduced, while improving the ease of storing, locating and retrievinginformation represented by the scanned document. All of this is achievable using readilyavailable hardware and software tools. Think about the space that your paper files currentlyoccupy and what you could do with that space if you didn't have to use it for file storage.Converting your paper files to electronic format also allows you to back up all of yourinformation which is something that is impossible to with paper files.

Ideally, this paper will serve as a guide to help you determine what you need to begin scanningon a regular basis in your office and to establish procedures that will guarantee long-term successin converting paper documents to electronic files.

Initial Considerations

Scanning Policies/Standards

Properly implementing a scanning and storage policy is not something that you just want to jumpinto without prior thought and planning. The goal of implementing a scanning solution should beto improve efficiency, simplify storage and retrieval and allow for a backup methodology.Before you can implement a functional scanning workflow in your office, you should askyourself some basic questions:

• What documents do I want to convert to electronic files?
• Do I want to capture all of my closed files and old documents (“Retrospectiveconversion”)?
• Do I want to capture documents from a set date and those that come into the office afterthat date?
• Am I going to eliminate maintaining paper copies of outgoing documents in my files soboth outgoing and incoming documents are all stored electronically?
• Am I going to scan all incoming documents or only certain incoming documents?
• If I'm only going to scan a portion of incoming documents, which documents will theybe?
  • Mail?
    • Letters
    • Pleadings
    • Etc.
• Discovery Requests – Scan and OCR rather than retyping to respond?
• Medical Records?
• Other Evidence?
• Will I shred all documents once they have been scanned?
• Will I keep documents with original signatures on file?
• Do I have the software that I will need? If not, what do I need?
• Do I want to be able to search the electronic files or do I only want on image of thedocument?
• Do I want to be able to scan a document in and then modify it in my word processor?
• Do I want everyone to be able to access these documents and if so where should they beplaced?
• Am I going to use my existing electronic folder structure or do I want to implement adocument management system (“DMS”)
• How much can I spend on this project?

You should use these questions as a way to establish an internal procedure that is realistic givenyour existing resources. Determining what documents will be scanned can impact decisions as towhether or not you need to add more hard drive storage space, use your existing software andhardware or purchase new and whether you can use your existing electronic folder structure orimplement a DMS. If you want the documents to be searchable, you'll need the capability toperform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on them. If you own a copy of Adobe Acrobat,you already have the capability to create a searchable text layer. If you want to be able to scan indocuments such as discovery requests or interrogatories and not have to retype them, then you'llneed a standalone OCR program which offers more capabilities than those found within AdobeAcrobat.

►THE DE FACTO (IF NOT DE JURE) FILE FORMAT USED TO STOREELECTRONIC FILES IS THE PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT (PDF)CREATED BY ADOBE. OTHER FILE FORMATS EXIST (E.G. JPG, GIF, TIFF)AND MAY BE USED TO STORE ITEMS SUCH AS PHOTOGRAPHS ANDDRAWINGS, BUT THE MAJORITY OF DOCUMENTS WILL BE SCANNED ASPDFS. PDF IS RECOGNIZED AS THE APPROPRIATE STANDARD BY THEUNITED STATES FEDERAL COURTS AND OTHER GOVERNMENTAL ANDLEGAL ENTITIES. AS SUCH, UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE, IT ISPRESUMED THAT YOU WILL STORE ALL OF YOUR DOCUMENTS IN PDFFORMAT. ADOBE PROVIDES THE FREE ACROBAT READER WHICH CAN OPEN PDF FILES AND MANY SCANNERS INCLUDE SOFTWARE TO CREATEPDF FILES AS ONE OF THEIR OPTIONS.

In most successful scanning projects, all inbound documents regarding a file or matter arescanned. If scanning everything, you can quickly and easily see those documents that need to besaved and dispose of those that you have no need to retain. This does require discipline on thepart of the staff person or attorney who is making that determination. But it also has the benefitof being reviewed either in or out of the office as long as personnel can access these electronicfiles. If it is unreasonable to scan everything coming in, then determine what is most critical andscan only those documents.

Whether you decide to scan everything coming in or only select documents, you need to assignstaff to scan the documents and store or route them to the appropriate users for review. Makesure that there are formal written procedures for staff to follow so that all documents are handledand saved consistently. Be sure to address what happens to original paper documents (e.g.Shredding, provided to the client, placed in file or only original signatures kept on file).

Outbound documents are rarely an issue, as most are generated electronically. However, thereshould be consistency in how documents are saved within your file storage system, so that alldocuments may be quickly found and retrieved.

A great example of a file storage system using tools that every office already has can be found in The Lawyer's Guide to Adobe Acrobat by Atty. David L. Masters from the ABA under “TheDigital Filing System”. Atty. Masters uses nothing more than the tools found in WindowsExplorer, a dual folder system and Adobe Acrobat to manage his almost totally paperlesspractice.

How to Choose the Right Scanner for Your Particular Law Practice

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