Going paperless is a great way to transform efficiencies at your law firm, and many law firms, attorneys, solicitors and other legal professionals hope to become empowered digitally. In line with the Government’s £1bn 7-year reform programme to modernise the courts and tribunals system, many law firms are deciding now is the time to make purposeful steps towards becoming truly paperless themselves. Here we outline five simple steps to help you achieve paperless status.

 1.   Understand How Your Legal Firm Runs Now

In order to begin a successful transition to a paperless law firm, you must first have a good handle on how your office runs now. This will form the basis of how you should structure and integrate a new, fully searchable and modifiable digital document management system.

2.   Invest in Good Scanners

It’s important to make solid investments early on. Reliable scanners are important. Your team will need modern and reliable tools if you want to reach your operational potential. 

3.   Case Management Software

Investing in leading case management software is the most important step on your journey to becoming entirely paperless. Secure, cloud-based, legal case management software will form the solid basis by which your firm operates. Its potentially vast array of features include the generation of emails, texts letters, time tracking, task and diary management, and costs budgeting. Leading case management software empowers you to access every cell of your workload from anywhere in the world, securely. 

4.   Focus on the Cloud

Of course, going paperless can be psychologically and logistically daunting. But these worries are reduced when you harness the power of working in “the cloud”. When working in the cloud, legal firms and solicitors can enjoy improved operation mobility, reliability and security. And they can work from anywhere at any time. 

5.  Integrate

Leading Case Management Software can fully integrate with your other systems. This means different tools can work to harness the power of the other, and together lift your legal firm out from under those mountains of paperwork. Using API Web Services, cloud-based legal case management software can easily integrate to your other systems, or connect to third party web services.  For legacy systems, Lateral has built a bespoke data exchange system which can be used to batch data in from accounting systems and other software systems.

The benefits of progressing to paperless legal operations are vast. Savings in time and cost, as well as increased document security, and improved data backup are important benefits. Also your law firm’s employees, and your customers will benefit from making the switch to a paperless office. Get in touch today to learn more about how Lateral can take your law firm paperless, and make you more efficient.