WHY ARE YOU STILL PRINTING?

This is the fundamental question for law firms when we help firms run paper-lite, document management and digital transformation projects. If you’re still printing or working with manual paper-based files, you’re not alone.

This short article explores a series of reasons why that might be the case.

Are you already running a law firm/department/team?

Here is a simple observation for which most people don’t give themselves credit for… You’re trying to run a law firm/department/team or all three – edit as appropriate!

This means that everyone has a role and everyone has billable hours to deliver (or to support the delivery of). I have yet to meet members of an SME Firm with the time or resource available to effectively take on additional projects of this nature alongside their everyday workload. Even if these projects would increase the firms’ efficiency and reduce operating costs significantly.

If you’re anything like any other law firm I know, you’re busy looking for new clients, processing work to retain clients you already have and meeting billable hours targets.

Suppliers don’t always understand

To compound this, salespeople for software suppliers don’t always understand your workload and pressures. Everyone is trying to find work, deliver work, and get paid. They want you to buy their software…that’s what their job is.

So what’s the answer?

Moving from paper-based to digital working is a strategic project. There are no quick fixes so your firm will be better positioned with some additional resource to deal with this.

It’s not that you can’t do this alone. It’s just much harder, more stressful and higher risk. You will be far better positioned to make progress if you have someone who can sit above with a bird’s eye view over the day to day transactional level. Someone who can work with your people to map current processes. Together they can design a digital solution which meets their needs, remove bottlenecks, duplication, frustration and engages them so that everyone can buy into the new solution.

It’s like trying to change the wheels on a moving car – you need an extra pair of hands that is focussed on just this aspect

If you want your firm to move to a more digital / paper-lite way of working or would like to discuss how technology can help you increase efficiency and profitability then feel free to connect or arrange an initial phone call. I’m always happy to speak with prospective clients and just offer some free initial advice.

Lots of firms believe that technology can help them fix their current problems, but they are not entirely sure how. If you have current challenges which you believe can be helped with technology then feel free to drop me a line.

Thank you for reading. Hopefully, this has been helpful.

Alex Hutchinson, Efficient Law Firm