Michael Herzog2023-09-20T10:53:45-07:00October 3rd, 2022|Featured, Paper2Digital Blog|
“At the most basic level, when the law firm mailroom delivers a scanned mail item via email attachment, the firm has lost control over the document.”
Joseph C. Scott, J.D.
Michael Herzog2023-09-22T11:41:42-07:00September 22nd, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
The article originally appeared in Legaltech News: Here
Security is a funny thing. For it to work, you have to do it all of the time. Wearing a seatbelt half the time isn’t a good strategy. Wearing the seatbelt every time is.
Sending scanned images of inbound, daily mail via email attachments is a ‘scan-to-email’ method that was never intended to be a secure, permanent operation. This was only a temporary solution conjured in response to the pandemic crisis. So why are law firms still doing it this way? The only answer is that nothing bad has happened- yet.
But something bad will happen because it’s not secure. We don’t have our seatbelts on. Sending scanned images of paper mail as email attachments creates these risks:
Security and governance of their information is the number one issue keeping clients awake at night. Firms must take the right steps to secure client information from the moment it arrives. Firms that do not secure client information from the moment of arrival are at risk of an event no one wants. In short, we need to wear our seatbelts all the time.
Lack of Governance
At the most basic level, when a law firm mailroom delivers a confidential file via email attachment, the firm has no control over the document and cannot govern or secure it. Scanned mail delivered as a PDF email attachment often goes to more than one person, so the exposure is multiplied, then subject to the behavior of all receiving parties. Recipients can open attachments on their desktop, circumventing conflicts, or confidentiality, share the file with other attorneys, staff, or external entities outside the confines of the firm’s information governance policies.
And during this process, sending a document by email attachment means the file exists on the Exchange Server, not the DMS. It may then be stored in multiple locations on multiple devices including local computers, network folders, other recipients’ mobile or desktop inboxes, other mail servers and more.
Cybersecurity Risk
Email is the #1 attack vector for cyber criminals. Users are attacked at the inbox, and the organization is attacked at the email server. Building a permanent daily mail scanning operation on top of this exposure zone is unwise, and unnecessary.
Another risk factor is wrong recipient error. Organizations with over 1,000 employees send approximately 800 misdirected emails every year. That is a rate of more than two emails per day, making it the most common type of error to cause a breach.
The System of Record is the DMS
Wrong recipient occurs most often as a result of an erroneous auto-fill in the send field – but wrong recipient is not the only risk caused by an unintended auto-fill in the send field.
The other negative consequence is unintended conflicts risk. Email is not a technology that can check for conflicts nor build ethical walls to ensure that only the intended parties of a communication have access to that communication.
The technology for this is the document management system (DMS).
Client information arriving by postal mail needs to be scanned directly to the firm’s document management system (DMS) and be available to users only by a link to the DMS. Simply put, the DMS is the technology of choice for 98% of all law firms to protect and govern sensitive client information and why it is regarded the firm’s “system of record.”
For instance, a wrong recipient “may” occur when receiving an email with a link to the DMS, but the recipient wouldn’t be able to open the link if they were not assigned access. That’s security.
Not only does DMS secure and govern client information but it is also the technology that helps firms comply with regulations such as The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) at scale. These regulations mandate, among other requirements, that firms be able to classify, track and, if requested, delete personal data held anywhere by the firm. This is effectively impossible with scan-to-email.
This is what it means to build a best practice solution and not an expedient solution.
Ethical Obligations
Direct-to-DMS delivery of digital mail is not just a good idea, but potentially an ethical duty of a law firm. Several of the ABA Model Rules are particularly related to safeguarding client data, including competence (Model Rule 1.1), communication (Model Rule 1.4), confidentiality of information (Model Rule 1.6), and supervision (Model Rules 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3).
What do these duties require? When using technology, they require that we employ reasonable measures to safeguard the confidentiality of client information, that we communicate with clients about our use of technology and get informed consent from clients where appropriate, and that we supervise subordinate attorneys, law firm personnel, and service providers to ensure compliance with these duties. In comparison to the capabilities of how a DMS protects client information, email is not a reasonable measure.
Conclusion
Security of client information isn’t a part time job. We’ve got to wear the seatbelt at all times and, unfortunately, the way many digital mailrooms now operate expose the firm to a multitude of risks. We don’t need to wait for the unfortunate event to happen – firms can act on this today and install the right technology that integrates digital mail with the DMS.
Michael Herzog2022-06-15T13:03:30-07:00June 15th, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
Cadis Stuart-Hodges, IGP, CRM
We spoke with Cadis Stuart Hodges, IGP, CRM, who joined DocSolid earlier this year as Senior Director of Services. Prior to joining DocSolid, Cadis spent over 15 years inside of law firm’s IG and Records departments and was the Director of Records for Drew, Eckl & Farnham.
Since she joined, Cadis has been overseeing DocSolid’s Consulting and Professional Services divisions, adding value to clients’ IG and RIM best practices for Airmail2 Digital Mailroom and Digital Records Room implementations. We caught up with her to see how her new role is going.
DocSolid: How do you see your role as Senior Director of Services at DocSolid?
Cadis: I am in the constellation DocSolid management helping to make sure that our implementation staff and our consultants have everything they need to serve our customers. Helping the services staff and even our sales people have a good view of the important parts of the information governance journey for law firms is also part of my day to day. My role is to make sure that our customers have the best experience while also ensuring their Airmail2 and records room solution is an industry best practice for all the firm’s important processes: IG, records, and security.
DocSolid: Why is IG, security and records and information management important for a digital mail room?
Cadis: The most important reason is risk management which is a huge part of the legal landscape. The thing that you are always trying to do is to keep your risk as low as possible as a law firm. It’s how you build procedures. It’s why you have client guidelines.
Your biggest areas for risk is your client information. That’s the client’s trust in you, that’s your bread and butter, how you’re working every day. The last thing that you want to do is put a process in place that keeps your client information less secure or exposes you and your client to an external threat that could have been prevented.
The way that IG helps you manage that is by creating and implementing the processes around that information that keep it secure. You need to know at all times where your data lives, what format it’s in and how you are transmitting that information around your firm.
Airmail2 closes a huge gap in that risk because Airmail2 does not put client information out into your whole system. With Airmail2, you’re putting your information directly where it needs to go–the DMS–because your DMS is where you govern all of your data, all of your document information, all of your client information, your mail ingestion, your emails back and forth, your documents that you produce for work, your client produced documents–all of that is governed in the DMS.
With Airmail2, you’ve got an end to end, auditable process. It gives you the pathway to ingest information and put it directly where it needs to be governed—in the DMS—which reduces a firm’s risk immeasurably.
When you’re doing things in a more hodgepodge way, you’re attaching stuff to email or you’re having people open PDFs on their phones, or they’re forwarding PDFs, or they’re sending a copy to themselves and the entire team. There’s no definitive version of that information. You don’t know who’s going to put it into the DMS or if it will make it there at all.
You avoid all of that by having a definitive copy that is immediately put into the DMS from the Airmail2 system.
DocSolid: Give us an example of a specific IG challenge that our clients have been facing.
Cadis: A common resistance we face is that people still want a copy of that PDF in their email—when what they really need is what we provide: a direct link to the DMS that opens the document directly. I think a challenge that we’re currently facing is that people want to have that information on the go and what we help them to understand is that they need their document management systems to be what is available on the go, not PDFs in your email. Best practice is never to have that PDF in your email at all, this is something that we help firms understand.
DocSolid: Have you had some recent successes in helping some clients improve their IG policy around their digital mail room?
There are several recent success stories at a wide range of firms – from a 100+ attorney firm to one of the world’s largest firms–where DocSolid came in and looked at their process and revamped them all together. These firms were all-in immediately and completely prioritized IG and security of their client information. A key factor, especially in the larger firm, was the top down leadership endorsement of the project which essentially did not allow for deviation from our IG-driven processes for digital mail.
Overall, I am seeing more and more firms understand the importance of the governance piece and that is a victory—for the firms. Security of information is driving it – and the dovetailing of security with governance is a trend we will see more of and a positive one if it pushes firms to implement best practice processes over their sensitive client information.
Michael Herzog2022-06-08T13:20:26-07:00June 8th, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
Every day, new paper arrives in law firms in the form of documents delivered by UPS, USPS, or FedEx. Before the pandemic, it was custom to sort and deliver this new paper to the desks of folks responsible for its disposition. That all changed when the pandemic sent us home. Suddenly, the daily mail was in the office, and we were at home.
Mail There and I’m Here
Firms innovated various workflows to bridge the gap. Email was a popular solution, although fraught with risks and efficiencies. Another solution was to continue delivering paper mail items to vacant desks. Folks would then commute to the office on occasion to review the mail and send it to the appropriate “storage location” for safe keeping or disposal (the shred bin, the working file at home, or perhaps the file room). Each “location” represented a separate workflow. Of course, another popular solution was to simply scan the inbound mail and send as an attachment to its recipients.
DocSolid took this as an opportunity to innovate. We developed a Digital Mailroom solution which delivers daily mail directly to the DMS with email simply used to notify recipients of new mail. These notifications were sort of like hearing the rattle of the mail slot at the front door.
But the problem of the mail and the recipient being in different places still needed to be solved along with the concurrent problem of routing the paper version of the mail items to their appropriate “storage locations.”
The Hub Bub
The team at DocSolid went to work on how to “bridge the gap” between the location of the mail – which still arrives at the office – and the recipient who is working at home who needs to get the mail to the appropriate storage location, whether that is the file room or the document management system.
Bridging the gap meant giving the recipient a way to control the workflow of the paper mail even after it was digitized. The answer: the Hub.
The email “notification” sent by the DocSolid Daily Mail system includes access to a “Hub” which allows the mail recipient to communicate with the mailroom team back in the office where the physical mail resides.
The recipient can send messages to the office team that offer instructions on how to handle the paper mail items. Choices like “discard” or “hold for filing” guide the mailroom team on handling the paper mail. It’s simple and intuitive and helps resolve these 3 common user questions quickly and seamlessly:
#1 – When do I know I have mail to look at? The Airmail2 system uses email but only when it’s efficient to do so. It is very efficient to send an email (a notification) to a mail recipient letting them know they have mail (yes, “you’ve got mail”). The recipient doesn’t need to check for new mail – they’re notified when it arrives.
#2 – How does the recipient “route” the physical paper? The mailroom back in the office is busy scanning paper mail. The recipient is at home and is notified of new mail – and can examine it in the DMS. But how does the recipient let the mail room know where to dispose of the mail? It could be a request to “place on desk” or “forward to records” or “shred” (yes – shred … for the intrepid). The ability to provide this disposition instruction is built into the Airmail2 Hub.
#3 – How does my colleague know about new mail? The Airmail2 solution supports “pairings” – matching other folks with the mail recipient so that all appropriate folks are notified of new incoming mail. This is managed by the Airmail2 system which can update pairings as they change (for reassignments, vacations, etc.).
Michael Herzog2022-06-08T09:48:19-07:00May 26th, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
The data from Cushman & Wakefield’s latest report, “Office of the Future Revisited: Three New Realities Shaping Hybrid Workplace Strategies,” suggests that almost half (40%) of the workforce will choose to remain in remote positions for the foreseeable future. If this is true, then law firms need a digital mailroom and digital records room operation that is secure, efficient, and reflects the needs for this new way of life.
Cushman & Wakefield’s report analyzes three new realities:
The data behind of each of these realities has drastic implications for law firms and organizations creating their office workplace strategies moving forward.
As firms begin to create their return to office strategies, it is important to factor in how the data of these realities will impact law firm security, efficiency, and attorney productivity.
Reality One: Office Space is Still in Demand
Demand for office space is finally returning for much of the world—and it is being driven by job creation. The world is seeing employment return to the levels it was before the onset of the pandemic. This accelerated growth is pushing more companies to feel the need to return to office or offer their employees the option to return to pre-pandemic office life.
Reality Two: Hybrid is Here to Stay
As organizations and firms create their return to office strategy, one thing is becoming clear: It is time to embrace hybrid. Instead of forcing attorneys and staff back into the office, firm and office leaders must cultivate a common understanding that will optimize employee experience for the limited time that staff is working in-house.
Reality 3: The Role of the Office has Changed
As the office becomes a less permanent staple in the lives of employees, the role of the physical office continues to evolve. Most organizations believe the office is now a place that can cultivate and build culture which can be used to inspire creativity and innovation. With that being said, this shift in mind set, coupled with the realization that hybrid is here to stay, is deemphasizing individuals and their dedicated desks. Instead, offices are focusing more on collaborative spaces and desk sharing.
The Normal NowTM
While these three realities are distinct, they are not all exclusive of one another. All three affirm that the workforce will dictate the next steps for law firms and organizations. While the workforce retains the leverage, hybrid is here to stay according to the data in Cushman and Wakefield’s report.
At the time of the report’s release, there are over 11 million job openings coupled with a 3.6% unemployment rate. The demand to fill roles has provided workers with the leverage to demand workplace flexibility like a hybrid schedule or work from home.
As of the last quarter of 2021 nearly half (40%) of the workforce indicated that they would prefer to never work full-time in office. One fifth of the workforce indicated that they would be open to a hybrid option. With 40% of the workforce stating that they would prefer to never work in office full-time. It is imperative for firms and organizations to create a hybrid workplace strategy that works well for employees and operationally.
A Best Practice Digital Mailroom and Records Room for a Hybrid Workforce
As attorneys and staff change the way they work, the delivery of client mail and requests for physical matter files must change as well. Scan-to-email work arounds that were put in place when the workforce first went remote were only tolerable as stop-gap emergency measures because they present real security risks.
Daily mail is mission critical because it contains client information that is confidential and time sensitive. Attorneys and staff working from home need a reliable, secure method for digital delivery. A daily mail process that relies on the conventional scan-to-email approach is not secure because it was never designed for this purpose.
A best practice digital mailroom operation delivers mail directly into the document management system (DMS) where sensitive client information is kept secure and governed according to firm policy. A best practice digital records room is similar, building a digitization project for scanning large volumes of paper records and storing them in the DMS.
Security is just one of many reasons why law firms need to design a digital mailroom. It is also essential to keep attorneys and staff productive, no matter where they choose to work.
Airmail2 Digital Mailroom and Digital Records Room are direct-to-DMS solutions with certified integrations for iManage and NetDocuments. Transform your firm’s paper-based mailroom and records room functions into streamlined, digital operations with a flexible design that supports work-from-home, hybrid, and return-to-office strategies.
Michael Herzog2022-04-06T06:09:23-07:00April 6th, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
Do Information Governance principles now apply to your firm’s mailroom?
Mail has been a perfunctory function aligned with other physical office services, but the pandemic shifted mail to a critical, and digital operation.
Mail workflows include sensitive client information, launch new work, and therefore often billable activity. This means matter-centric record creation is starting right from mail delivery, not later, from a pile on a desk, even if it be a digital pile on a virtual desk. Protection and integrity of client information has always been a part of our client agreements. Scanning to a digital format does not negate our obligations to sort this information correctly at the beginning of the process.
Since scanning and document description is involved, it is more technical as well. This brings in issues of data compliance and availability but also transparency and accountability from new processes created for the mail distribution. In short, no matter who this process belongs to organizationally, it needs to be a part of your well thought out Information Governance policy, and refined on an ongoing basis, just like any other records management.
Let’s simplify to just three areas of focus for your current digital or ‘soon to be digital’ mailroom operation. Below the 8 “generally accepted record keeping principles” registered as the “The Principles” by ARMA, have been highlighted for you in the areas of focus.
Stakeholder Consultation. This all-important key sponsorship ties the Digital Mailroom (DMR) to the firm’s ever-growing maturity on conversion to digital matter files.
Setting attorney expectations of ‘maximum electronic delivery and storage’ for overall firm efficiency helps create the all-important buy-in. The greatest success of a mailroom modernization project is standardization across all locations and practice areas which cannot be achieved without strong firm leadership.
A documented, smooth-running mailroom can only be achieved with a design driven by:
Protection of Sensitive Data. This concept is paramount in today’s legal environment (See the current LIFGS white paper on Client Information Governance Requests[i]). Monitoring and auditing tools such as logs of mailroom processes must be used to ‘trust and verify’ as well as safely satisfy internal, as well as external, compliance and potential audit criteria.
Much law firm mail will end up classified as a record, so every bit of accurate metadata added along the way adds integrity to these document classifications and the overall process. Adding further to the integrity, records policy can be amended to start in the mailroom, rather than documenting records only at the time of transfer to longer term storage repositories.
Comprehensive Chain of Custody. Firms must maintain a comprehensive chain of custody– ‘cradle to grave’ – from mail receipt and opening, sorting/naming/scanning, through a short physical retention and shredding.
In cases of, admittedly, necessary secondary physical delivery, we must minimize and document that process. Adding documentation at this step like “We mark here in the log we were asked to drop it to a desk after scanning the envelope,” is crucial to maintaining the chain of custody in these situations.
Providing fast and appropriate availability of mail items along the way to careful and documented disposition, makes the law firm more competitive, as well as providing a defensible protection strategy for key client and law firm files.
[i] https://www.ironmountain.com/resources/whitepapers/h/how-the-landscape-has-changed
Michael Herzog2022-07-27T12:54:59-07:00April 4th, 2022|Featured, Paper2Digital Blog, White Papers and Articles|
FULL ARTICLE PDF
Secure and Efficient by Design ILTA Spring 2022 – DocSolid.pdf
“The typical scan-to-email approaches are short-sighted and, in many ways, dangerous.”
Michael Herzog2023-09-22T11:42:05-07:00February 28th, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
The Arc of Time:
Do you remember the introduction of the fax machine? It was a primitive first step but had a dramatic impact on the practice of law. Documents could be moved in minutes rather than hours (and in a bit of irony, the paper document was converted back to paper after having been digitized – but that soon changed with the advancement of email). Examples such as these are numerous and have meant that over the arc of time, the practice of law has moved along the path of digital transformation to become more productive.
The business of law has been the beneficiary of a continuous stream technology which has made the literal practice of law more productive. Much of these advancements have helped us move along the path of digital transformation. Digital transformation takes place at the intersection between technology and process. As technology has advanced, the implementation of technology has often meant changes to the process of the practice of law.
Digital Transformation Comes to the Mailroom:
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the “process” of handling incoming mail had not advanced since the invention of the stamp. As the pandemic moved us out of the office and away from our incoming mail, the old process became much less efficient. Recipients either had to travel to the office to get their mail, have it re-delivered to their homes, or perhaps the mail was “digitized” and delivered electronically.
Digital Mail and Attorney Productivity:
The digital transformation of the mailroom has begun and the opportunities to leverage this transformation will yield improvements in attorney productivity with appropriate changes in the process of mail delivery. Here’s how:
The digital transformation has come to the mail room. As technology advances, so too does productivity and efficiency. The digital transformation within the law firm mailroom allows for corresponding improvements in the mail receipt-and-delivery process. The arrival of new technology and processes are yielding improvements in productivity and efficiency – an important step forward.
Michael Herzog2023-09-22T11:42:15-07:00February 2nd, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
Law firms throughout the country are still being held back by one thing — paper. Postal mail and a law firm’s mailroom have logistical challenges on a scale we simply never saw before 2019. The traditional format of a mailroom creates a significant bottleneck in attorney productivity as presently constructed because they were never designed to support the new realities of work from home with a hybrid workforce. As if that wasn’t causing enough pain already, the United States Postal Service (USPS) recently introduced new service standards that will only make things worse.
At the end of 2021, the USPS changed the services standards for first-class mail. These changes have resulted in lengthened delivery times for 40% of first-class mail and packages. This means time-sensitive law firm and client documents delivered through the USPS could take up to five days to arrive, instead of the standard two days.
The new service standards are not only affecting delivery times, but also price. First-class standard sized mail and large envelopes such as letters, bills, and statements are all seeing about a 10 percent increase in price. These changes are all a part of current Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy’s 10-year Delivering for America plan to tackle the agency’s massive debt.
For people operating outside of a law firm’s mailroom, these changes may seem inconsequential, but the slower delivery times are a new risk factor that will impact a law firm’s ability to get inbound mail routed internally on time. Law firms are critically dependent on paper mail from clients, courts, opposing counsel and research sources. Postal mail delivered to a law firm will often mandate a calendared response, contain sensitive client information, or contain information that is critical for a court case or essential to the progress of an active matter.
The question now stands: With a distributed workforce and the physical mail slowing down,
can a law firm afford to operate this way?
Clearly no. To combat potential delays, firms are now able to implement a best practice digital mailroom solution that serves the entire firm as a reliable, efficient, and SLA-based operation that consistently provides the fastest and most secure method of delivery possible. It will have an immediate impact and offers enduring value to the firm because it involves a critical component of attorney-client communications. Attorneys and their clients will notice this difference. Speed wins.
A best practice digital mailroom is designed as a seamless, efficient digital operation with batched workflow steps, built-in quality controls (QC), and direct-to-DMS delivery with configurable routing rules as needed for different types of documents.
The solution is the Airmail2 Digital Mailroom software by DocSolid with certified DMS integrations. DocSolid deploys Airmail2 with best practice workflows designed for law firms to solve the productivity and logistics problems of inbound mail delivered by the post office or couriers. It also aligns with information governance policies because it works with the firm’s existing document management system (DMS) to store matter files and sensitive information where they belong right from the start… in the DMS where it is profiled, protected and governed.
Simplistic scan-to-email methods are not sufficient. Paper mail should not just be piled on top of office desks. Makeshift mail scanning is just a fire drill on the way to becoming a train wreck because a completely different approach is needed to meet the needs of a hybrid workforce. Don’t wait for slower postal mail and unforeseen outcomes to negatively impact the quality and speed of service at your law firm.
Michael Herzog2022-03-02T13:48:25-07:00January 19th, 2022|Paper2Digital Blog|
In law firms, Quality Control (QC) occurs as part of various processes: Conflicts Checking, Proof Reading, and Citation Checking are just a few examples. But rarely do we apply QC measures to a law firm process like document scanning.
The Remote Workforce is Transforming the Back Office
With the advent of the pandemic, law firms have been adapting the back-office to better support remote working. Finance, HR, Marketing and most other back-office functions including the Mailroom, now work with remote teams and serve internal customers who are also working remotely.
It is now typical that incoming mail is routinely digitized to facilitate distribution to the remote workforce. The digitized mail can easily be delivered to the firm’s document management system and to attorneys and staff working remotely. In this new digital process, it is essential to apply QC measures.
Here’s why:
Scanning equipment has become much more reliable over the years. Common problems like double-feeds are less common, but they do occur, along with skewed pages, and errors introduced by humans like mis-ordered pages. As part of the Mailroom process, checking the quality of each scanned document will eliminate poor quality documents making their way through the process.
In a digital mailroom process, documents are cataloged as to recipient or other relevant information. Part of the QC process is to review this metadata to assure its accuracy.
A key benefit of the digital mailroom is to shred the paper after the QC step. Shredding only happens when recipients have confidence in the image (scan) quality and accuracy of the metadata. But if this confidence is gained, then firms can dispense with delivering or retaining the paper version of the incoming mail.
Implementing Quality Control
Let’s look at the digital mailroom and implementing quality control. There are 5 steps in a quality control regime.
To effectively manage the QC process, each document should be identified with a unique identifier. This “fingerprint” will assure that each document can be tracked from initial processing through disposition in the document management system and will provide a full-proof way to link the electronic and physical versions of a document.
Quality is determined by how it is defined and measured. A quality document is a single source which guides the quality control process. It takes the guesswork out of the quality control objectives in your firm.
Employees work best when they have specific step-by-step procedures to follow. In the example of the digital mailroom, you should define which documents are checked and how they are checked. This will define whether all documents are checked or just a subset as well as whether to include steps like ‘survey thumbnails’, ‘compare first and last page’, ‘compare page counts’, or ‘compare every page’.
Once procedures are established, they should be documented in step-by-step instructions sufficient to guide even the new members of the quality control team.
A very valuable component of a QC process is the opportunity to collect data, which can then be used to refine the imaging process. Are there higher error rates with certain scanning equipment? Are there common issues like pages out of order (a document-prep issue perhaps)? Is double-sided vs single-sided scanning creating errors? Is color captured appropriately? Data can be your guide to a more efficient process.
This article will guide you in implementing a quality control process in your digital mailroom.
