Peer to Peer Magazine

28 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SPRING 2017 A Firm Investment in Going Fully Digital CASE STUDIES Two years ago, Lindquist moved to a fully electronic maer file, and the benefits continue to flow both in the service of our clients and back to the firm, providing substantial savings, productivity and information governance. Here's a look at what we did. The Initial Process The process began by accommodating a small group of aorneys who wanted increased mobility and access to their files from remote locations. Their success created momentum within the firm to move to a fully electronic maer file, which we did in January of 2015. To create the fully electronic maer file, we needed a productive solution for scanning and integrating documents into the document management system (DMS). We selected KwikTag Legal because it is an integrated scanning solution that embeds within our existing application soware. It manages related paper digitally and scans directly to our existing DMS. KwikTag Legal also provided the ability to separate functions. Profiling documents can now be tasked to certain skilled staff, while quality control (i.e., ensuring the documents are in the document management system and of good quality) is tasked to others. Scanning, shredding and verifying page counts can be assigned to staff with a different skill level. This has enabled us to optimize both workflow and staff. We also implemented electronic data folders — an add-on feature in eDOCS, our OpenText DMS — to organize our maer files and set up the virtual Redwelds in each practice group. Now, when maers are closed, our records department locks down the maer and checks it out. Once this has taken place, the clock starts ticking per our firm's retention policy for the information stored in the electronic file, just as was the case for our paper records. What's Better? Savings and Governance As heightened needs emerge for compliance, integrity and security requirements, governance over paper records is a crucial component, and digital files are easier to govern than paper. Paper records are notoriously inconsistent, requiring manual review each time a maer file is pulled, causing unwanted delays on the client side and creating unnecessary time burdens on staff tasked with retrieval. In a client-centric market, it's untenable to place requests in waiting queues that could last days while boxes of paper are retrieved and reviewed, nor is it a good investment of staff time. Going digital, removing paper from the process, is a key facilitator of information governance. From a management standpoint, information and process consistency are significantly streamlined, creating a domino effect of efficiency that allows value to flow within the firm and to the clients. In addition, there were many hard cost benefits to going fully digital. From the onset, there were cost Law firms are in a client-centric market. Anything that can be done to invest the firm's dollars in better service of the clients and to improve governance over their records is a strategic priority for Lindquist & Vennum. by Suzee Allaire A Firm Investment in Going Fully Digital SUZETTE ALLAIRE Suzette Allaire is the Chief Operations Officer of Lindquist & Vennum. She can be contacted at sallaire@lindquist.com.

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