As hybrid office planning continues to evolve in the majority of law firms across the country, firms can no longer rely on the typical scan-to-email approach. This cobbled together method of daily mail delivery is inefficient and it creates cybersecurity liability for the firm. This is where the Airmail2 Digital Mailroom comes in.

DocSolid’s Airmail2 Digital Mailroom completely transforms a law firm’s paper centric mail into a secure, efficient digital operation. Airmail2 is setting the standard as a best practice for law firm digital mailrooms because of how well it facilitates hybrid work. Legal mail items contain client information that is confidential and time sensitive. Therefore, the methods for processing the daily mail digitally must incorporate the same standards applied for all client data at the firm.

The Airmail2 Digital Mailroom was engineered from the ground up to solve the security and compliance requirements of law firms with direct digital delivery of daily mail fully integrated into the firm’s document management system (DMS). Sensitive information is protected and governed by DMS best practices consistent with the firm’s information governance policy.

To upgrade a law firm mailroom with a best-practice digital mailroom solution such as Airmail2, the firm’s stakeholders must gain an appreciation for the distinct differences and advantages of implementing a new digital mailroom operation. This information should help leaders understand the business case as it relates to their law firm. After that, DocSolid can be called upon to help define the scope of a project including requirements, objectives and budget requirements.

In order to upgrade your mailroom to a best-practice digital mailroom, it is important to understand a few of the fundamental differences and advantages:

Security and Information Governance

Law firms are quite often driven by security and information governance concerns. Legal mail items contain sensitive client information. The typical scan-to-email approach that most law firms have in place today involve a variety of security risks that put the firm and their client’s sensitive information at risk. A best-practice digital mailroom operation delivers the mail directly into the law firm’s DMS where confidential client information is properly secured and governed.

Cost Reduction and Efficiency
Recognize the amount of labor, quantified in people and dollars terms, that is consumed by continuing to support makeshift scan-to-email methods. A best-practice digital mailroom is labor efficient with batch work so that it requires fewer mailroom clerical staff, reducing the cost to operate it. Stop the wasteful mail handling time currently in the hands of attorneys and legal assistants who do not have time to be distracted by the redundant delivery of paper mail.

Overall Business Process Improvement
Mailrooms are scanning daily mail because some of that mail belongs in the DMS. But how do you know that ever even happened? A best-practice digital mailroom closes the loop on business process because it is a comprehensive end-to-end solution for getting mail into the DMS. It accomplishes this seamlessly with built-in quality controls, automatic email notifications and operator alerts. And one more thing… The process is faster too. Speed wins.

Attorney / Employee Experience

A best practice digital mailroom achieves an attorney-focused experience that does not require employees to change the ways they work. For mail recipients, it is a reliable daily routine, no matter where they may be physically working on any given day. Everyone appreciates the consistent experience you get with Airmail2 automated notifications and the option of communicating back to the mailroom. It is ideal for workers to have a few things that they can rely on operating the same way every day. The importance of this is greater than ever with hybrid work. The daily mail is a fundamental physical office function that is essential for law firms.

Productivity

Labor is a one of the biggest considerations when deciding to budget for a new Digital Mailroom system. Ongoing labor costs are going to cost more than the purchase price of the software.

With scan-to-email, or even the old convention of physical mail distribution, operational labor costs add up quickly. This tends to be overlooked, but it becomes easy to see how these costs add up when the operational labor is taken into consideration for everyone that plays a part in supporting the mailroom operation. Contributing to the cost of a digital mailroom operation, consider the following:

• Mailroom labor
• Mail recipients labor
• Quality control work
• Physical paper mail delivery & disposition
• Help desk, administration, IT involvement, supervision

The redundancy caused by a scan-to-email approach leads to additional labor costs that are avoided with a digital mailroom solution like Airmail2. Scanned mail has to be scanned and emailed to recipients, but in most instances, the mail is also physically delivered as well. This becomes double the amount of work for the mailroom staff, but it also adds work for recipients as they have to reconcile both the digital and physical documents while also creating the work of disposing of the physical mail once they are done with it.

Conclusion

The overhead costs of maintaining an inefficient mailroom operation alone makes a best practice digital mailroom operation a fiscally responsible decision for a law firm. Scan-to-email is bleeding money from the firm each day it is kept in place, while the cybersecurity risks are akin to playing Russian Roulette with confidential client information. It’s impossible to align daily mail delivery with the hybrid work variability of each employee in every office location… Unless you adopt a best practice solution.

Next Steps

• Contact us to request a copy of the complete Airmail2 Advantages Checklist.
• Book a demonstration to learn how you can design a best practice Digital Mailroom for your firm with Airmail2.

Remember when document management systems were implemented as a way to maintain versions of a document?  With the advent of PCs, WordPerfect, and a server to store documents on – version control was something that law firms could quickly lose control of.   Document management systems became the way to manage the authoring process – and a big upside was the ease of sharing documents.

Of course, along with the sharing of documents came the issue of over-sharing, or managing ethical walls between clients and attorneys.  This fostered the invention of ethical wall solutions which helped automate managing document sharing and access.

Today, document management systems are responsible for much more than ethical wall security.  Evolving legal requirements surrounding client confidentiality and data privacy concerns are among the risks forcing law firms to re-evaluate their technology infrastructure and policies for securing client matter information subject to an ethical wall.[1]…

This is why the document management system is the technology of choice for 98% of all law firms to protect and govern sensitive client information.

When scanned mail items are trafficked outside of the DMS, a firm cannot secure or govern information nor place it behind proper ethical walls to avoid conflicts. So how could we go wrong?

 Don’t Forget the Daily Mail

The notion of scanning paper and securing the scan within the DMS seems to have been forgotten regarding daily mail, but the concerns of conflicts and need for ethical walls reside here as well.  Legal mail items contain sensitive client information. At the onset of the pandemic, most law firms cobbled together a quick fix in scan-to-email, but this method involves a variety of security risks that put law firms – and their client’s sensitive information — at risk.

Scan-to-email solutions mean vital documents are left drifting through cyber-space, often left in email inboxes or perhaps an email folder – without the security of the DMS. The solution: a best practice Digital Mailroom operation.

A best practice digital mailroom operation is the answer because it delivers documents not as email attachments but directly into the firm’s DMS where sensitive client information can be properly secured and governed — completely negating the risks created through scan-to-email. A digital mailroom utilizes intelligent, asynchronous processes to enable clerical operators to work efficiently and securely.

Not only can a best practice Digital Mailroom be created, but they already have been. DocSolid’s Airmail2 Digital Mailroom completely transforms the law firm’s paper centric mail into a secure and efficient digital operation that enables the hybrid work environment.

With Airmail2, skilled mailroom staff (those that can accurately determine appropriate client-matter-folder) can profile scanned mail items directly to the DMS.  This is accomplished without the need to provide direct access to the DMS (which should be reserved only for qualified legal staff and attorneys).  The benefit of this approach is the shift of the profiling step from legal staff or attorneys to the mailroom team.  Airmail2 also supports profiling scanned mail items by recipient (easily determined by addressing information on the mail item)  – a method that is deployed to mailroom staff who are less skilled.

The scan-to-email solutions firms conjured as a response to the pandemic were only designed as a stop gap and never intended for long-term use. The hybrid legal workplace is here to say. Airmail2 Digital Mailroom enables productive, secure delivery of daily mail directly into the DMS. Learn more about the Airmail2 and how to transform your law firm’s mailroom and institute best practice principles for security and governance in our latest white paper here.

[1] https://inoutsource.com/ethical-walls-and-confidentiality-screens-not-just-for-conflicts/ )