PAPER LESS WORLD

Our Paperless World
Steven O. Rosen
The Rosen Law Firm
620 SW Main Street
Portland, Oregon 97205
(503-525-2525)
[e-mail]

We have turned our litigation firm of two attorneys, a legal assistant, and a legal secretary into a completely digital firm and left all -- well, almost all -- paper behind. Our files are digital, our dictations are digital, all mail (except for junk mail) is scanned and stored as digital files, all documents to be produced are numbered electronically, all confidentiality logos on documents to be produced are stamped electronically, almost all documents are produced on CDs or DVDs, and our photographs and videos are stored digitally. Getting there has been easier and much more successful than we expected.
In retrospect, one of the smart things we did was to introduce only one new element of technology at a time, which enabled us to avoid trying to learn several new pieces of complex software and/or approaches at once and mastering none.
The first step occurred in 2001, when we purchased and installed Time Matters 3.0. We subsequently upgraded several times, most recently to Time Matters Enterprise Edition
7.0. Time Matters is the backbone of our system, capturing in one place all calendaring, contact, deadline, and case management information. By having this information in one place, we avoid conflicting entries. Yes, we really do not have any paper calendars.
They are, in fact, forbidden in order to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings. We do not have individual Rolodexes that need constant updating, and this prevents old information from being used erroneously. We also do not have paper files that are scattered throughout the firm or on someone's (most likely my) desk.
An essential discipline to making Time Matters work is diligence in entering data. Our legal secretary captures all contact information, billing information, calendaring data, and so on as it comes in. A result of this discipline is that it has been years since anyone has wandered around the office asking if someone else knew the address of a particular witness or the phone number of some expert. All of this data is captured and available to everyone on the network.
The next step was to set up Time Matters for remote access. We quickly found that the early versions of remote access program PCAnywhere were too slow for any practical use. We then set up a virtual private network (VPN), which worked smoothly, and have now moved to Remote Desktop Protocol. With RDP, we can access our Time Matters

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database and retrieve scanned images and Word documents on the road using either a firm laptop or a computer in a hotel business center. The connection is protected by multiple passwords. In addition, we synchronize each laptop before it leaves the office, creating an updated database within the laptop for easy access on an airplane while not attached to the office server. As an alternative, we use Terminal Services, operating our server remotely as if it were one of our workstations. Access is, of course, protected by passwords. Once we learned to manipulate and use Time Matters successfully, we added scanning.
Our approach has been pretty simple: no more paper files, with the exception of original releases, judgments, contracts, production documents, deposition transcripts, large timelines that do not scan well, and other documents that have particular importance as originals. We created a folder system within Time Matters that replicates our old paper file system through the use of a feature within the program called "auto naming." There are individual folders within the "Smith v. Jones" case for correspondence, pleadings, discovery pleadings, discovery correspondence, memorandums, legal research, each witness, news articles, and so on. Each document is linked to one of these folder descriptions. When we call up Time Matters, we can view a list of all correspondence, all pleadings, or all of any other folder within a case. A "Eureka" moment occurred for us early on when we realized that no longer would anyone be asked to index pleadings or correspondence. It all gets done routinely as a matter of data entry when a document comes in. Another great moment was seeing that we could word search all Word documents within a particular folder. An added bonus is that multiple people in the firm may view a document, in their separate offices, on their individual computers, simultaneously -- without resort to the photocopier.
Here is the way it works for a piece of incoming mail or fax. Our legal secretary creates a "new document" record in Time Matters, filling in fields of information about the document: its date, the case, and its description (e.g., letter from counsel for Smith re proposed protective order). Time Matters takes this field information and creates the appropriate path and filename for the document within our system. Our secretary then scans in the document using Time Matters' scanning function, creating an Adobe pdf file that is OCR’d at the same time. This file, which is essentially a photographic image of the paper -- text, handwritten notes, graphics, and all, which is also word searchable -is then saved and linked to this "new document" in Time Matters and placed within a digital file folder under the case name. The person who scanned it in then posts a notice about the document in the Personal Journal of each member of the firm who needs to see it. Paper is not distributed.
As Adobe and other softwares evolved, we have been able to convert emails and Word documents directly to pdf’s instead of scanning them, whenever hand-written signatures are not necessary, as in the case of emails and outgoing pleadings filed electronically with a typed electronic signature: “ / s / Steven O. Rosen.” The results are also cleaner and use up less disk space.

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Outgoing documents are handled in a similar manner. As we create documents, they are saved as a new document linked to Time Matters. This enables us to keep track of documents that are in draft mode. New versions of a document may be linked together using Time Matters' New Version feature, which saves all prior versions and creates new versions for editing with the click of an on-screen button, if the author(s) prefer to save various drafts over time rather than rework the same one until perfected. Once finalized, outgoing letters are scanned so that the signatures on the letters and attachments are captured.
Once a pleading or letter goes out, our secretary re-links the TM listing to the signed and scanned (or electronically converted) pdf. When anyone in the office sees that the
TM listing for a document created in-house is linked to a pdf, he or she knows instantly that the document has been completed and distributed. The Word draft is left in the electronic file, unlinked to TM but available if some or all of it needs to be copied or edited for a subsequent document.
What happens to all the incoming paper? Once scanned, incoming documents are piled into a box, but without regard to case or whether they are correspondence, pleadings, or something else. Thus, we have a paper backup but no filing time devoted to it.
Normally, we save this stack for about three months, in case the original needs to be retrieved and checked, though this rarely occurs. We ultimately recycle all paper through a shredding service -- except for original releases, judgments, contracts, discovery documents, and the like.
Each evening the network server automatically makes a tape backup of all data, including email, on the system. Each day's tape backup is taken out of the office so that a complete backup of all our data is safely preserved off-site every night. Weekly, a complete backup is placed in our bank's safety deposit box.
Right now, about 459 gigabytes of data occupy our office system (which entailed the purchase of a new server in late 2006, when the old server's 110-gigabyte capacity was nearly reached). Total capacity is 811 gigabytes, and since we tend to add less than a gigabyte a week (every once in a while, a file of color photographs may use 2 or 3 gigs), our office computer memory should be fine for a few years. At some point we will move long-closed case files to DVDs for storage in the bank safety deposit box to free up space on the hard drive and make room for newer cases.
Of course we still have a storage room filled with bankers’ boxes of paper files from cases that predate our digital era. As time permits we have been scanning those files onto DVDs, and returning original files to clients as they may request.
One buying decision made all of this work especially easy. We invested $2,500 in a
Ricoh IS3300 scanner that scans black-and-white pages at a rate of approximately 38 pages per minute. The scanning is so fast that when we first started using the machine I didn't believe it was actually doing anything. The high speed scanning makes it possible to quickly run through a stack of a couple of hundreds of pages of production. Color

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documents and photos take a bit longer, but even documents that require hand placement on the glass screen can still be scanned at a rate of between 2 and 8 per minute. We have since added a second Ricoh IS3300 scanner. Over time we also added high speed printers for each person at the firm to make review of longer documents easy.
An easy transition was to digital dictation. For years I used a hand-held micro-cassette recorder, and then handed (or when out of town, express mailed) tapes back to my secretary. Now I use an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder DS-3000. I dictate into the machine as before, and then attach a wire from the bottom of the voice recorder to a
USB port on my laptop. The file is automatically downloaded and then easily emailed to my secretary for transcription. The secretary uses a digital transcriber by Start-Stop, which operates similarly to the old micro-cassette transcriber and just involves opening audio files via point-and-click and listening on headphones plugged directly into the secretary's computer.
Before entering this digital world, we purchased custom printed labels that "Bates" numbered each document we received from a client for production. Now we use
Intellipdf BatesPro 1.0 software to electronically number each scanned document, starting with a number such as Jones000001. Numbering hundreds of pages is essentially an instantaneous task, if they’re all in one pdf document. This program also can add logos to each document in a matter of moments. We use it to add "COURT
ORDER RESTRICTS DISTRIBUTION" or other similar phrases.
We also use CaseMap, TimeMap, and NoteMap software. CaseMap encourages us to capture all facts in a case and inspires group collaboration on analysis of those facts.
TimeMap takes selected facts and and deadlines and creates a timeline of upcoming dates for a given case. We use NoteMap to create outlines of issues, deposition and trial questions, and oral arguments. All three programs are easy to use and have yielded substantial savings in billable time, and therefore money, for our clients.
Finally, each member of the firm has either two or three flat-screen monitors that run off a single computer, which makes viewing, writing, and editing of documents easier.
Windows XP easily permits this simple improvement which makes each day’s work easier and more productive.
Yes, I still have paper on my desk. But there is no longer any risk of losing pieces of a file somewhere in the firm.

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