P2P

57 I L T A N E T . O R G workers demand more from their print environment. Users must be able to send documents to print from other devices, including their mobile devices, and have more accessible ways of printing at their office while working from home or visiting a client. Clients also need to be able to print when visiting the law firm, and providing guest printing facilities can ensure client meetings are more productive. Avoiding Common Mistakes As we work to overcome these challenges, it is essential to consider some of the prevailing misconceptions concerning print. Keeping Print Jobs within the Firms Network Microsoft has released Universal Print to provide a single print driver and a way of moving print to the cloud. However, Universal Print uses an intermediate language (XPS) that can apply compression that may affect print output. It also means that users may not have full access to all the finishing options of their print devices. However, one drawback of Universal Print is that all spooled documents are sent to the cloud before being downloaded and printed on the devices in the office. This can strain the firm's network connectivity considerably and cause delays in the printing process. Careful consideration needs to be given regarding whether or not all documents will be processed via the cloud when the printing device (desktop/laptop) and the output device are on the same network. Complexity of Multiple Vendors Several solutions will connect to or integrate with your printing environment. This might include a cost recovery solution that uses a desktop application to prompt for client and matter details at the time of print and may also include software integrated at the MFD device to capture copy counts. This may also have other technology embedded in or connected to your MFDs for the digitization of paper. Integrating other vendors into this environment can cause many problems, especially when you need to make changes (such as relocating a printer and changing its IP address) or when something goes wrong, and it is unclear which solution is causing the problem. Minimizing the number of vendors is beneficial if we want to simplify our print environment. Picking a print m a n a g e m e n t / d i g i t i z a t i o n partner who can provide a wide variety of services and is a specialist in providing software and services to the legal sector is essential. Law firms have specific needs that not all software solutions can handle, for instance, the ability to scan into the firm's Document Management System or for attorneys to delegate certain functions to their assistants. With delegation, an attorney can print and have someone else collect the documents on their behalf, and this is especially useful if your users are taking advantage of hybrid working and aren't always located in the same place. Printing from home and having someone start reviewing and redlining a document immediately is a huge benefit. "Law firms have specific needs that not all software solutions can handle."

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