Most attorneys are going as paperless as possible. It’s indeed becoming an industry standard. Setting up a paperless office is simple, it requires a scanner, software, and a process. Keeping your office paperless will save you loads of time and money.
General Considerations
Law Firms Should Be Paperless, Not Paper-Free (Guest Post)
How to Start and Run a Paperless Office (ABA GP SOLO)
Paperless Lawyering: What it Really Is, and the Nuts and Bolts of How it Works (Webinar)
Essential Tech for Paperless, Virtual, and Remote Solo & Small Law Firms
Scanners (non-exclusive listing)
Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 (most popular among attorneys)
Scanning Apps:
Software (non-exclusive listings)
PDF PROGRAMS
Adobe Acrobat (industry standard) – provides many powerful tools, including OCR (optical character recognition – edit and search PDFs) and with training you can use it to redact information, remove metadata, create forms, and bates stamp discovery for electronic production.
Kofax – includes editing functions, OCR, collaboration and sharing features, and electronic signing.
FoxIt – includes editing functions, OCR, collaboration and sharing features, and electronic signing.
PDFPen – for Mac users, with OCR, security, editing, and form creation features.
CutePDF offers low cost and free alternatives. They obviously have some significant limitations.
EFAX
Some VoIP systems like RingCentral provide efax
Stand-alone electronic fax services
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (a step beyond an organic file management system, for small-mid size firms)
VOIP
Options for Law Office Phone Systems (NCBA Center for Practice Management)
VIDEOCONFERENCING
PROJECT MANAGEMENT & COLLABORATION
Procedures
Further Reading from our Lending Library
Paperless in One Hour for Lawyers (Donna S. Neff and Sheila M. Blackford (American Bar Association)