Reduce costs, enhance security, better efficiency, and improved customer service are 4 well-documented benefits of electronic workflows.
A typical law firm processes thousands of physical documents every year, anything from pleadings, motions, contracts, wills, trusts, evidence files, leases, deposition transcripts, etc.
The majority of those paper documents and that information are handled through manual processes – inefficient legal manual processes.
As important as documents are in the legal industry, documents still continue to be a source of problems for firms. According to ABA’s Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims, law firms haven’t yet solved their legal document management challenges – the activity generating the most claims against firms was preparation, filing, and transmittal of documents.
Not only do poor document processes impact your customer service and satisfaction, it impacts your firm by creating security and compliance risk, unnecessary inefficiencies, and unrecovered billable costs.
You (and everyone else at the office) need a simple and easy-to-use system that still has the ability to securely store, capture, organize, share, and manage any type of digital or paper-based document within a central repository.
And you can have it – with electronic legal document management and workflow.
How Electronic Document Workflow Will Make a Difference
Some firms try to cut document costs through less expensive resources to administrative tasks. Unfortunately, these less expensive resources really just end up masking the fact that a firm may not be reducing the actual time spent accomplishing tasks, but instead they may actually be increasing the complexity and time spent.
Below is a list of 4 ways your law firm can benefit from electronic document workflow.
1. Security and Compliance
Protecting a client’s sensitive, confidential, and private information is vital to the practice of law (and client satisfaction) – and it’s the law. Non-compliance to the can result in monetary fines and, with the most serious of violations, imprisonment.
The challenge is that law firms experience threats from all angles.
Paper documents are inherently insecure so just by replacing them with digital versions you help to decrease the risk of exposure. With options like encryption, authentication, and password protection, you can send and receive information safely and securely – and if you or someone else loses a laptop or any other mobile device you don’t have to worry about the security of sensitive information.
2. Reduce Costs
Research shows that firms lose up to $16 a day per attorney in unrecovered costs. How many attorneys are in your firm? Even with 5 attorneys, that’s almost $30,000 a year loss in cost recovery alone.
Whether your print and scan costs are rolled into fees or itemized and billed, in order for your firm to accurately compensated is by having visibility into and capturing print and scan volumes, determining actual costs, assigning output, and determining the best way to charge. Electronic workflow can help you do that.
3. Increase Efficiency and Productivity
Finding ways to improve efficiency is critical for law firms to survive.
Automated workflows and electronic documents allow you to complete more billable tasks in the same amount of time as before and with even greater accuracy. And automating legal case management, with all its complexity, can eliminate inefficiencies and provide you with a competitive edge that help grow your customer base and the business.
4. Improved Customer Service
You will be able to provide clients with more responsive and reliable service delivery.
Living in a world where technology allows to be connected at all times, it’s no wonder clients expect the same connectivity experience from your firm.
With electronic workflow and documents your office will have the ability to answer any queries related to a client and review and approve information from anywhere at anytime, securely, through email and mobile devices – which benefits the client, but also allows you to move on to your next task faster than before.
Technology has caught up with the needs of law firms. With digital documents and flexible workflow customization you can improve client experience, improve your bottom line, increase productivity, and keep confidential information, well, confidential.
Want to know more about how you can benefit from electronic workflow? Let’s talk – we’re happy to help.
