Legal administration: Is there a better way?
Administration; it’s a frustrating element for nearly all businesses. For a legal firm it can be even more difficult; being a document-heavy industry, knowing where your documents are and ensuring they are stored against the right matter number, is absolutely crucial.
With legal admin being such a chore, here are a few technology tips we’ve found over the years to help you better manage your business information.
Scan and store information
Using technology effectively means that capturing information at the point of entry to your business has some real benefits. From a technology standpoint, it doesn’t matter whether the information is in paper or electronic form; the key is to capture it early.
The ‘early’ part means that you need to look at technology that connects directly with your practice management system (PMS). You want to look for technology that enables you to map and index relevant information automatically from the document in question. This means you can automatically search and retrieve information against a matter number, for example.
At Inland Digital, we have numerous examples of how we’ve helped legal firms do just that: Find a way to transform document capture and make it an easier process.
Automate billing
Billing for document production is another area of administration that it can pay to automate. Whether you are focusing on sundry expenses or charges like printing, copying, and scanning, technology exists to help you automate this process.
Again, like document capture, this is focused on connectivity to your PMS. The whole process means that you can automate charges directly at the source. Let’s look at print as an example, we can use technology to enable your team to automatically allocate costs to a client matter at the time of printing, saving the hassle of accounting for it later or having admin staff tied up in trying to work out which cost goes to which client. It’s the same for copying and scanning: Technology enables you to do this at the multifunction device, automating the process.
Collaborate wherever you are
If, like many firms, you have multiple offices, keeping everyone connected across offices without having to physically travel between locations can be a real benefit.
We’ve seen how technologies such a SMART interactive whiteboards, can make it easy to collaborate between different office locations. It means teams can work together on a matter without physically being in the same room, sharing information and notes, working together on the same virtual whiteboard.
Inland Digital can help
Interested in finding out more? Inland Digital has helped many legal firms to automate and collaborate better, using a range of industry leading technology. Click here to find out how we can help you transform the way your business manages information.