Law firms are facing a tremendous opportunity to reduce real estate, but paper-based records rooms are an obstacle to this.  As firms strategize real estate compression plans, eliminating floor space required for records rooms and ad hoc paper file storage is key. Not only that, but the new hybrid workforce of in-house and at-home attorneys cannot be supported securely or efficiently when records room workflows are paper-based.

The DocSolid white paper, “Law Offices Get Smaller, Records Rooms Get Digital” outlines a digital records room strategy and implementation plan. A digital records room is a firm-wide system of software, workflow and services, to digitize paper records to the DMS (including iManage or NetDocuments), replacing paper file rooms.

Jamie Blomquist, CIO at Maslon, comments: “There are essentially three use cases for transitioning to a Digital Records Room: reduce costs by reducing the footprint of paper so we can optimize our office space for higher value work; improve productivity and help attorneys have anywhere access to their files; and lastly, driving our paper files into one centralized DMS file helps us govern and reduce risk better.”

The white paper includes insights from information governance and records professionals and details IG and security requirements for a best practice digital records room such as:

1. Tight DMS / RMS integration with leading industry platforms such as iManage, NetDocuments and FileTrail
2. Vendor DMS expertise and solution flexibility so that a firm’s DMS customizations can be accommodated
3. In-house and outsourced staff empowered with DMS profiling-scanning capability without DMS logins
4. Enterprise software that matches a firm’s security regime
5. Avoidance of scan-to-email attachments or new operating repositories
6. Built-in auditing of the overall capture process, down to the document level
7. Paper document disposition-retention-shredding built into the process
8. Ability to segregate processes for confidential content e.g., HR documents

For more information about the DocSolid white paper, “Law Firms Get Smaller, Records Rooms Get Digital” go here: https://www.docsolid.com/law-firm-digital-records-room-white-paper/

The ways attorneys prefer to work has transformed. 76 percent now favor remote work, according to the 2021 Peer Monitor and Georgetown Law State of the Legal Industry Report. 

And if attorneys change the way they work, that means everything changes:  from how attorneys receive client mail and request matter files, to large scale financial decisions that affect one of the most expensive costs law firms have after salaries: real estate. 

This is why we shouldn’t be surprised when Sherry Cushman, Vice Chair and Executive Managing Director of Cushman & Wakefield, predicts “The legal sector will be downsizing its real estate needs on average 10% to 30% — and in some cases, 40% to 50%.”  

The opportunity to recapture real estate costs is extremely attractive to law firms, but firms first need to solve the paper-based problems of daily mail and onsite records.

When it comes to daily mail, attorneys and staff working from home absolutely require reliable, digital delivery of daily mail. Scan-to-email workarounds were hastily applied at the onset of the COVID-19, but now the mailroom needs to be made into a durable, permanent and secure operation. 

Legal mail items contain client information, and the methods for processing them digitally should incorporate the same standards applied for all client data at the firm. In retrospect, building a daily mail delivery process based upon email was not a good idea.

A best practice Digital Mailroom operation delivers mail directly to the DMS where sensitive information can be delivered securely 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 document management system. Built-in quality controls enable confident shredding of the scanned documents. It’s a Paper2Digital Transformation that can make entire file rooms disappear.

These are best practices focused on the critical paper-based workflows inside the law firm. The value proposition is strong just based on eliminating the costs and inefficiencies of paper records and nothing more. However, a multitude of other high value, and high visibility, goals become possible including; repurposed office space, hoteling, and downsizing. Beyond the tangible cost savings, these digital workflows are required to keep attorneys and staff productive, no matter where they may choose to work on any given day.

DocSolid’s Airmail2 Digital Mail + Records Suite transforms a firm’s paper-based mailroom and Records Room functions into streamlined, digital operations supporting both work-from-home and return-to-office strategies simultaneously, while enabling firms to optimize their real estate.

The Airmail2 Suite provides scanned delivery of sensitive and time-dependent mail and file requests via the document management system (DMS), enabling firms to govern, secure, and distribute information efficiently, according to policy and in keeping with individual client guidelines. 

More can be learned about the benefits of transforming mailroom operations in our industry white paper:
7 Reasons to Upgrade to a Digital Mailroom Operation .