WHITE PAPER
The advantages of being a paperless Law Firm
Including a
Case study of Velez PA and Miranda PA
03/09/09
Paperless ? What does it mean to go “paperless”? The correct term should really be to go with “paper reduction”. When a client’s case is put together, there is a certain amount of original paper documents that are necessary for documentation. However, when a document is handled and stored and retrieved and then stored again, the chance of human error slips into the equation, i.e. it gets put in wrong file or section or worse, shredded by accident. The original papers can only be in one place at one time. You make copies, you mail, you fax and get paper confirmations, and then, you put papers in folders with tabbed pages and in-house paper forms to track your work and your conversations. Law offices today are experiencing a paper blizzard of biblical proportion. It is also not being eco-friendly. Where does it all end?
Time ? If paper shuffling wasn’t enough, what about the physical time requirements to handle all this paper? The traffic created retrieving and replacing files along with trips to the printer adds up in time. Writing handwritten notes back and forth, handwritten checklists, emailing back and forth about the notes, and then making copies of everything! What happens when someone can’t come to work? How many hours or days do you and your staff, spend trying to figure out where that person left off on files and then re-assign the various tasks to someone else in the office? How many clients can you ethically represent without sacrificing quality or having to add staff?
The Files Files grow like gardens, with just a little nurturing they can grow to become big and strong files, growing until they reach maturity where they can be several inches thick. They can multiply and repeat the growing process. An attorney once told me that she had pondered getting paid by the pound of paperwork because she would probably double her income. Some people refer to files as the “great abyss” and talk about “sending people into the file” like it’s an extra room to retrieve documents. Legends and bragging rights are written about the size of a client’s file. Files also tend to gather on desktops like people gathering around the water cooler. I have seen as many as 18 files on a law firm’s desk at one time.
The Office A typical small law firm will have an office space occupying 1500 to 3000 S.F. with a reception area, a conference area, coffee area and a variety of other cubicles. Ten to twenty percent of any office is dedicated to the “filing room”. Another, smaller, percentage of the office is occupied by a collection of law books and other related material.
The Technology Computers are on every desk and have a myriad of applications to assist in the daily operation of the office. Applications also seem to sprout revisions as fast as the files multiply. As a Law office you continually update and train to keep up with the latest version #19.03 of whatever software you are using. More money is spent on upgrades, more downtime with staff training instead of being productive. What about integrating (putting band-aids on) non-compatible software packages that can cause the crashing of the computer system and sends everyone off on a long coffee break.
Billing/Invoicing Manually doing these tasks allows a lot of billable hours to slip through the cracks. Inconsistencies will cost a law firm thousands of dollars.
The Staff They were hired by you because they possessed certain skill sets you need in the daily operations of your office. After the first 90 days they are pretty comfortable with the day to day running of your office. There is a very high loyalty among smaller law office workers. There is also a great sense of pride in their work in most small law offices.
The Decision You hold an office meeting and discuss joining the 21st century and going paperless by being on the web virtually. It’s a brave new world trusting some else, a third party, to manage and secure all your innermost documents. Peace of mind isn’t exactly how you would describe this moment. But, you’ve made the management decision that this is the right direction to go for your law firm, both from a cost standpoint and an efficiency one. First, you research and find everyone in the market has a great deal, but you have to ask, is it the best deal for your law firm? What about features and costs, are they fixed or flexible?
Flexibility There is one web application benchmark that doesn’t change, it is flexibility. How much flexibility do you get with the application you are looking at? In other words, how much control do you retain in your day to day operation? Is everything fixed, rigid, hardcoded where you can change only a few things? Does anything you want changed need to be done by the providers programmer and you get billed?
The Clients In this study there are two attorneys, Andres Velez PA and Ginger Miranda PA; two legal assistants, Brenda Tapia and Debbie Perez; and a secretary, Barbara Saa. It is an office with a very active client base. They take on clients for family, criminal, real estate and immigration cases. They hold office hours of 9-5PM Monday through Friday in Ft Pierce, Florida. The two attorneys work many after office hours to stay ahead on client’s cases, office paperwork and office management and the client billing. Technology wise they have online case research, and a computer network within the office and VPN setup to work off-site.
First meeting In our first meeting in September 2008, Andy Velez and I sat down and went over their office procedures. Typically, all files start with the Status of “intake”, an information gathering stage to decide whether to take on the client. Once the client has been accepted the status changes to “New”, more information, contracts and documents get exchanged and retainer fees collected. Then there are the three stages of “Working”; Working pre-lit, Working lit, Working post lit. This is the meat of representing clients. Basically, you will negotiate a settlement, argue a case, or appeal a case. After all this, the last stage is the “Close”, where letters are sent out to all parties and final accounting is done. We talked about what Virtual LOOP is and does for solos and small law firms.
Virtual LOOP The word LOOP stands for Law Office Operating Platform. A web-based secured application that is accessible from any internet connection including PDA’s such as Blackberry and i-Phone. You can run your office, add clients, do general ledger accounting, do case research, upload documents, check calendars, check on individual tasks within a case, reassign tasks, check on staff workloads, make notes, create time slips, do billing and invoicing, generate reports and much more. You just need access to the internet. There aren’t any requirements for any software downloads or special hardware. Updates are done seamlessly and automatically, you are notified through the users blog of any programming changes or new features added.
Implementation The initial setting up of the virtual account is done in 15 to 30 minutes. There are 2 installation wizards, one for your web account and the other for the general ledger. These wizards walk you through the detailed steps and they can be modified easily. You get to set up your account and accounting system to match what you have been doing all along.
In an October 2008 we had a meeting with the entire office to go over the application, everyone was intrigued as to how this was going to work and annoyed at my distracting them from their work. They were gracious and once they were shown the application, partner, Ginger Miranda said she understood the concept and could appreciate all the time savings steps. Everything was so easy to access, even the uploading and downloading was just a few simple clicks according to partner, Andy Velez. Over the next few months they uploaded their cases and really started to apply the application and all its features. IT person, Iain Low, stated that while visiting their office, “it was the first time he had seen an entire office all working on the same application at the same time”.
The New Office Months have gone by and on a recent visit I found an office that smiled a lot and had a lot less paper hanging around. Everyone seemed much calmer and more focused.
The Results Over the past 5 months, the law offices of Velez PA and Miranda PA have seen the following results. They have reduced the work week by 10 hours between the two attorneys and they have been able to gain more clients without having to add more staff. The efficiency of their office has improved by one third. Financially, they have reduced costs and grown revenues since January 2009.
According to the charts you can see that saving 5% of your time printing is now moved to improving emailing duties. The file handling savings created a 15% time savings that is now added to CSM phone calls and marketing for the law firm.
Conclusion The cost savings are enormous. These clients are able to run their office of 5 for an annual expense of $3,792 (and NO they aren’t going to get any extra frivolous billing from us). If they had belonged to one of our affiliated bar associations they would have had to pay only $2,832 and saved an extra $960!! The market shows that they would have to spend for a comparable application between $12,000 and $18,000 per year, if they could even get all the features found in one application such as Virtual LOOP. This represents a savings to the clients of 68% to 79% (it would be 76% to 84% with the discount)!
By reducing the time spent on file management and printing, the clients were able to free up approximately 20% of their time. Time savings for this office has allowed them to reallocate time to more income producing activities. Income producing activities such as emailing and calling current and past clients plus marketing to referrals and others about their offering of services. This will further increase their revenue and increase the cost savings making the clients even more profitable.
To get the full paper including charts and pics email me at allen@virtualloop.net