Law Technology Today From the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
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Over the past 20 years or so, lawyers have consistently seen the paperless office as the Holy Grail of legal technology. Unfortunately, most attempts to find that grail have ended under a stack of papers. Despite early setbacks, there’s a new flurry of interest in the paperless office. Within the series of revisiting old legal technology concepts under current circumstances, has new technology revived the paperless concept?
In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell reexamine the paperless office, survey the current process of going paperless, and speculate as to whether the era of the paperless office might have actually arrived. Kennedy muses the “if it comes to you in paper, it stays in paper” mentality of lawyers. While he points out that many of the themes around going paperless are processor powers, speed, bandwidth, the cloud, smartphones, and apps, his true hangup is with storage and organization. With an optimistic mentality, Mighell discusses getting more lawyers to use scanners, making sure they are never presented with paper copies, and how apps like Genius Scan and Evernote can facilitate the process of going completely paperless. Both Kennedy and Mighell agree that the only way to effectively go paperless is to start with a process and build good habits. Luckily, it’s tax season!
In the second part of this podcast, Kennedy and Mighell discuss why some lawyers still prefer WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS over Microsoft Word. As always, stay tuned for Parting Shots: that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second the podcast ends.