Is your legal organization considering going paper-lite? It’s more than minimizing paper use—it’s about shifting your mindset to better manage and access all your legal information. This approach is increasingly popular among legal organizations because of its ability to boost efficiency and cut costs.
So, what does it mean to be a paper-lite legal organization?
A paper-lite legal organization is one that minimizes paper usage by leveraging digital solutions for document management and workflows, while still recognizing the need for physical documents in certain situations.
The transition to a paper-lite legal organization offers an opportunity to enhance efficiency, improve customer service and increase security. However, the change to a paper-lite organization doesn’t happen overnight. It requires careful planning, the right technology and proper training to ensure it benefits the entire organization.
Many legal organizations are turning to legal case management software to support their transition to a paper-lite organization.
Five Benefits to Going Paper-Lite Within Your Legal Organization
According to the latest American Bar Association’s Tech Reports, the use of cloud computing within legal organizations has risen significantly, now encompassing 60-70% of all organizations.
As this trend shows, adopting digital software isn’t stopping anytime soon. Here’s a look at some of the advantages to going paper-lite:
- It’s better for the environment.
Switching to a digital platform to manage your legal information extends beyond just increasing efficiency. An average office worker uses close to 10,000 sheets or 20 reams of paper a year. By reducing paper use, you not only demonstrate to your customers and partners your commitment to sustainability, but also help protect the environment. This is an important factor to building relationships with eco-conscious customers and colleagues.
- You’ll improve efficiency in your daily legal operations.
Legal files are fluid and often need frequent updates. With multiple team members working on the same document, version control can become a challenge. Paper documents make it difficult and time consuming to manage such changes. On the other hand, a digital system allows for quicker retrieval, easier version control and seamless collaboration. Documents are created and stored online, enabling real-time editing by multiple team members and reducing confusion over document versions. This streamlines operations, saving countless hours that otherwise would be spent making paper-based changes.
- You’ll save money through reduced expenses.
Traditional paper systems incur significant expenses—printing supplies, labor and storage space. Legal organizations typically allocate about 3% of annual revenues to printing and document input. Whether you store paper files in house or at an off-site facility, maintaining them requires ongoing investment. By adopting a legal case management system, these expenses, potentially saving thousands of dollars annually, with year-over-year savings compounding over time.
- Your valuable information will be more secure and protected.
Without a legal case management system, critical information might be scattered across email inboxes, network/shared drives, local hard drives, scans, phones, handwritten notes, physical files etc. While team members may have personal systems for managing these repositories, this exposes sensitive case and matter data to risk, it makes it harder for other team members to step in and retrieve necessary information. A legal case management system centralizes case data, making it easily available to everyone who needs it, while keeping offices clutter-free. Plus, housing information in the cloud also enhances security by preventing unauthorized access.
- Your team can work flexibly from anywhere, at any time.
Not being physically present with your teammates is no longer a barrier for making progress on cases and matters. With a paper-lite legal matter management system in place, your team members can remotely access information they need in real time with an internet connection. Storing files in a central location makes it easy to search and retrieve necessary documents whenever needed. Plus, built-in workflow and notetaking features allow for efficient collaboration from the comfort of home or the office. With data securely stored in the cloud, you can rest assured that your information is protected. .
Going Paper-Lite Is Easy with the Right Technology Partner To Help
Transitioning to a paper-lite system is a great opportunity to elevate your organization’s efficiency, customer service and security. Legal Files can help in migrating your paper files to the cloud, making it easier to manage, store and organize critical legal information from a single platform. Say goodbye to multiple legal filing systems and paper trails. Your team can quickly access all their legal information whenever they need it, from anywhere.
With nearly 35 years of experience supporting organizations across a number of industries, Legal Files Software, Inc. provides the security, peace of mind and collaboration capabilities that only a centralized platform for all your legal cases, matters, issues or projects can offer.
“Working with Legal Files has been perfect. As a non-profit representing low-income clients, we are required to file quarterly reports. Normally, these can take up to anywhere from 10 days to two weeks; but with Legal Files it takes only a day or two. The time saved allows us to assist more clients. Legal Files has met all our other needs and more.”
M. Elizabeth deCastro, CLR Project Attorney
Transitions of PA, a Legal Files Customer
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