Every law firm scans important documents, but performing quality control on the digital file is typically an informal process or done only on request. Why should a legal practice perform quality control on scanned document images at all? Or, to what extent is it even necessary?

As with many things, the real answer has many shades of gray. The question is not “do, or do not,” but “when and to what extent?”

Industry associates would argue that without a formal image QC process, the end user ends up doing the QC at the moment the scan is being used! Some have tolerance for this and others not so much. How many times have you asked for a better copy of something in the past because it is not legible or missing a page? This is irritating for the user, and it can be embarrassing for the sender, but it is not uncommon. In this instance, the QC done by the end user is “post-inspection” instead of “pre-inspection.”

Technophiles will argue that scanning hardware and software is so good, and improving, that the instances of errors are extremely rare events. This is simply not true and even low error rates are not an acceptable excuse for managers in Information Governance (IG) or the Records Department to have no quality control in place.

Truthfully, these attitudes rely on the fact that the original paper version still exists “somewhere.” What if we want to encourage getting rid of the paper altogether – either during the scan or at a later time in the process? Untold fortunes have been spent on offsite document storage because it serves as a guilt free trash can that is generally unseen. It is a costly example of “out of sight, out of mind” in a legal practice. Law firms and corporate legal departments are losing patience with the large and ever-increasing expense for offsite document storage services. Unfortunately, this problem won’t go away unless you fix it. The prerequisite for the Records Department to employ a consistent policy of shredding documents is to give everyone in the firm full confidence in the quality of the scanned image.

This is the moment when scanned image QC matters. Though laissez faire is the common attitude towards casual scanning, there are plenty of important documents scanned this way, so it does not enable a firm to proceed with confidence to shred that paper. The unsaid assumption with informal QC is that the original document is kept. However, once your law firm decides to adopt a less-paper initiative where only critical paper docs are kept, now QC is an essential part of the process. Read: actually shred and recycle paper instead of store it!

The decision in some projects is to immediately jump to the other end of the spectrum. “Let’s check every page of the original to the image.” While this is certainly thorough, have you actually tried it for more than a few documents? Tedious to say the least… and after hundreds of documents? Alternatively, is it really worth $20+ per hour, forever, to hire it out?

Rather than a binary, all-or-nothing choice, think of QC as a spectrum of options taking into consideration the casual scanning, structured scanning and even automated scanning in some cases.

A jammed document feeder caused by dog eared pages or torn pages will be the reason for the largest number of scanning errors by far. So, any completed scanning procedure (a scan that started and also finishes), will generally produce good image results because the technology is pretty good.

If a person somewhere, either the end user or an assigned person, at least touches the hard copy to compare it with the image results – however quickly – that is far better than the alternative of no quality control procedure at all. Just tracking any exceptions or issues as they are found provides the metrics to discover if a more detailed quality review procedure should be considered.

Other Best Practices:

• Preview all pages in a thumbnail view: Dark or crumpled pages are easily seen
• Page count before and after the scan: Can be semi-automated
• Proactively look for probable challenges in the original physical paper document and inspect those images
• Adopt a scientific sample size approach to testing: Inspect one document in each batch of ten, then inspect all documents in a batch if an error is found

When this approach is institutionalized, there are a few other considerations. Who does these QC steps? One answer is the person who brought the document to the party. There are other methods of quality control with structured scanning, but that is a topic for another article.

So, you have decided you want to become the paper to digital or less paper law firm of the future. But you are not sure where to start. Getting started in the right way is a key success factor. Through our experience, we have defined five over-arching questions for you to consider with care. Answering these questions will help you create a project framework to guide your paper to digital effort.

Implementing the paper to digital law firm means establishing policies and practices at the institutional level. You must study the various areas of your firm (administrative departments and practice areas) to determine what policies and practices can be implemented across the board, and where exceptions must be made. The give-and-take between individual preferences and institutional needs can sometimes be epic.

Question 1 – The Big WHY

Not all ideas are good ideas. Converting paper into electronic format has tremendous benefits, but those benefits only come with effort. A very clear understanding of the big WHY is essential. Let’s step back and ask;

“Why are we doing this?”

Objectives like more efficient operations, access to documents anytime from anywhere, improved information governance, or reduce off-site storage costs are typical tactical answers.

What about strategic benefits? Do you want to be a more agile law practice, or deliver better client services, or simply be the innovative law firm of the future?

Understanding the big WHY, or WHYs plural, means being honest about the burden that paper places on your business. Paper makes an organization sluggish. Think about it… You move it around, you store it, you retrieve it, you even lose track of it sometimes.

In today’s competitive market, there is no room for a sluggish law firm. Recognizing the costs, risks and inefficiencies of paper in your legal practice is how you and your colleagues will come to realize and articulate your big WHY.

Question 2 – Paper Paper Everywhere, but what’s the most important?

Your paper to digital effort will grow and eventually you will consume the entire paper monster. But you cannot begin there… First, you should decide which paper you will focus on when beginning your paper to digital project.

Let’s start with a hard look at which paper makes your firm sluggish. Paper can generally be divided into a back-file, which is paper that you are keeping but not actively working with, and active files, which is the paper used to conduct day-to-day business. Back-file paper typically will not make your firm sluggish unless it is constantly retrieved from storage. If that is the case, it probably means the paper was moved into storage too soon.

The paper that makes your firm sluggish is the paper you deal with day-to-day. It exists in the practice and it exists in the back office for administrative purposes. It is the paper received by mail or courier and it is also the paper printed from files received electronically. It is paper that is read, filed, retrieved, marked up, delivered to clients, and more. The paper you will focus on for your paper to digital initiative is related to active files.

Question 3 – Will your people change their habits?

The habits around paper-handling usually start in preschool. The method users apply to managing the paper in an active file are just as permanent and will vary from attorney to attorney, and practice area to practice area. The desire to have the a physical document in-hand, or at-hand, is very strong indeed.

One of the biggest challenges with the digital transformation of a law firm is getting folks to change their habits. Firms must move from a collection of fastidious paper filers, to a consortium of filers who all agree to follow the rules that institutionalize how the firm manages paper. To become both digital centric and paper smart requires everyone to work towards that shared objective. Three ingredients are essential: Senior partner/executive endorsement, Initial training at rollout, Ongoing communication/reinforcement. We will delve into those topics further in other posts.

Question 4 – Will your people use the technology?  

The habits around technology are similar to the challenges around paper-handling. Some users embrace technology, while others choose to avoid it and have as little contact as possible. Implementing a paper to digital initiative in a law firm means implementing technology which moves the firm from individual process and practice to institutional forms of the same. This assumes all participants achieve the same baseline of technology fluency. It will be easy for some users to achieve the required fluency, while others will simply need more help.

Question 5  – Will your firm adopt new policies to support new practices?

A successful less paper effort must be supported by policies that drive paper to digital practices.  A key example is your firm’s policy around shredding of paper. Will the firm sanction shredding? Will it be mandatory? Will it occur immediately after scanning? Will the electronic matter record be the “official record” for all matters?

The polices are not the hard part. Gaining consensus and the promise to support new policies is the challenge. It means that custodians of the paper must commit to new methods, new technology, and new attitudes towards the work they do every day.