Peer to Peer Magazine

27 WWW.ILTANET.ORG product was improved through vastly more efficient search and mobile access. We do a lot of insurance work, and our aorneys must reference hundreds of policies going back over decades. We now have a knowledge repository that anyone can access through NetDocuments. Searches take seconds, not hours, and we reduced our real estate footprint as well. Paper is harder to keep track of, it's expensive to produce, and it is more difficult to implement retention policies for. All of this was simplified through digitizing our records. Integrating KwikTag Legal into our DMS helped meet our strategic objectives. Our aorneys are empowered through improved search and mobility, which ultimately translate into productivity. An Accurate Solution Success wasn't automatic, though. A critical task was to convince people that the scanning we did would be as accurate as possible. We couldn't miss documents or pages, and everything on paper had to be faithfully reproduced in the DMS. If people discovered problems, they would lose confidence in the scanning and would opt out of allowing us to digitize their records. DocSolid's KwikTag process was critical to making our scanning accurate and fast. KwikTag is a robust tool that detects and corrects scan errors, confirms uploads to the DMS and ensures that paper copies are properly destroyed or sent offsite. Extensive tests of the scanning hardware and the scanning process refined our workflow and made it as efficient and foolproof as possible. As in other areas, good process and well-trained people are just as important as the technology. Our modular process allows us to allocate resources more efficiently. Our well-defined, discrete steps include paper preparation, profiling, scanning and quality checking. A paper record does not need to flow through the whole process at one time. Nor does it need to be handled by the same person. If someone is available to prepare paper for scanning—removing staples and paper clips—they can do that as time permits. When they are done, they can drop the paper record on the stack waiting to be profiled in KwikTag, and someone else can do that. This process tracks each record's progress, so nothing gets lost. An Elegant Solution We continue refining and improving our scanning workflow to make it as quick and accurate as possible. Within the next year, we plan to ramp up bulk scanning and eliminate all paper files in file cabinets and secretarial areas. The integration between NetDocuments and DocSolid has been notably smooth and easy. Next up for Gilbert is growing that relationship through DocSolid's Postmark for NetDocuments. Postmark places a small barcode tag on any document printed from the DMS to indicate that it has been stored properly, is an exact copy from the DMS, and can be destroyed. If the document has notes, the paper can be scanned to KwikTag, which will see the barcode and upload the one with handwrien notes back to the DMS as a new item, aer which the document's disposition can be clearly assessed and actioned. Our 2013 scanning initiative began with the long view. We knew we couldn't make all the paper go away overnight. Geing buy-in across the firm would take time, as would geing appropriate technology and processes in place. We never had the goal of becoming a paperless office, but instead sought to improve the firm's efficiency and mobility, while reducing risk. Four years later, we can actually make every file cabinet in our office go away. No aorney will be tied to our physical office by their paper records. They can access anything from anywhere. That's a goal worth working toward. P2P Access from Anywhere: DocSolid and NetDocuments Free the Information in Paper CASE STUDIES FRANK SCHIPANI Frank Schipani is the Director of IT at Gilbert LLP in Washington, DC and a 20+ year veteran of the legal industry. He's been through the trenches of countless implementation and upgrade projects, from finance systems to colocation facilities and everything in between. He's an active member of the ALA Capital Chapter and helps advise fellow members on technology issues. Contact him at schipanif@gotofirm.com.

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