DocSolid and NetDocuments - Unlock the Information Lost in Paper

By Frank Schipani – Gilbert LLP

When my firm migrated its document management system to NetDocuments 2011, we gained some capabilities the firm had long sought including improved searching, anywhere access and built-in disaster recovery.

But after the NetDocuments implementation, the firm still had too much information locked up in paper records or in scanned records that were not properly OCRed and made available for searching in the DMS. Productivity was lost in frequent physical trips to key file cabinets. When paper documents were filed incorrectly, searches were time-consuming and frustrating. And, of course, those filing cabinets took up space and added to our real estate expenses, which the firm wanted to reduce.

When we added DocSolid’s KwikTag Legal in 2013, we now had a robust scanning solution that we could use to start a bulk back-file scanning initiative to drive paper records to NetDocuments. We started out with realistic expectations. We didn’t intend to become paperless at all. Our goal was to enable attorney productivity through substantially improved search and mobile access to documents. To make that happen, the scanning and saving solution had to be as easy and foolproof as possible. The best way to do this was to use KwikTag to manage the scanning process and ensure that scanned paper made its way to NetDocuments properly.

Different people have different reasons for wanting to scan paper. Everyone wants improved search capabilities, and the easy answer to that is to digitize the paper and put it in NetDocuments where it could be easily searched. Some hate how the paper takes up space in their office or in file cabinets around the office. They think paper and cabinets are ugly, particularly in this era of glass walled offices and open workspaces where it is harder to hide things. Some understand the liability of not knowing where their records are and the expense of looking through paper in a discovery request.  

Of course there will always be some that would love to keep their paper forever. NetDocuments allowed us to structure our file storage in a way that mimics the file cabinet structure, and this eased the minds of those who were worried they would not be able to find their records once we digitized them. This is understandable. Many people are very visual and they will remember forever that a folder they stored five years ago is in the second cabinet, third drawer, ten inches from the right. I understand this because my wife is the same way. Ask her about a book we haven’t touched in three years and she will tell you on what shelf it sits, in what room of the house, and she can name the five books on either side of it.

Once we started some bulk scanning projects it was very satisfying to see the victories start to accumulate. It wasn’t long before attorneys began remarking on the ease of searching for their documents electronically, and the groundswell of enthusiasm and successful adoption went from there. As we digitized additional library materials and other valuable records, attorney work product was improved through vastly more efficient search and mobile access.

We do a lot of insurance work, and our attorneys have to reference hundreds of insurance policies going back over decades. We now have something like a knowledge repository that anyone can access through NetDocuments. Searches take seconds, not hours, and we were able to reduce our real estate footprint as well. Paper is harder to keep track of, it’s expensive to produce, and it is more difficult to implement retention policies. All of this was simplified through digitization of records. Integrating KwikTag Legal into our DMS helped meet our strategic objectives – our attorneys are empowered through improved search and mobility, which ultimately translates into productivity.

Success wasn’t automatic, though. A critical task was to convince people that the scanning we did would be as accurate as possible. We wouldn’t miss documents or pages, and everything in the paper would be faithfully reproduced in the DMS. If people discovered problems, they would lose confidence in the scanning and would opt out of allowing us to digitize their records.

DocSolid’s KwikTag process was a critical component for ensuring our scanning process was accurate and fast. KwikTag is the robust tool for detecting and correcting scan errors, confirming upload to the DMS and then making sure the paper is properly destroyed or sent off site. We conducted extensive testing of both the scanning hardware and the scanning process to refine the workflow to make it as efficient and foolproof as possible. Like in other areas, good process and well trained people to carry it out are just as important as the technology.

A key aspect of our process is that it is modular. The process is broken in to several well-defined and discreet steps, such as paper preparation, profiling, scanning and quality checking. A paper record does not need to flow through the whole process at one time. Nor does it need to be handled by the same person. Modularization allows us to allocate resources more efficiently. If someone is available to prepare paper for scanning – removing staples and paper clips – they can do that for whatever time they have available and set it down when they need to. When they are done they can drop the paper record on the stack waiting to be profiled in to KwikTag, and someone else can do that at some other time. Our overall scanning process keeps track of where each record is in the process so nothing gets lost. 

We continue to refine and improve our scanning workflow to make it as quick and accurate as possible. We plan to ramp up bulk scanning and eliminate all paper files in file cabinets and secretarial areas within the next year. 

The integration between NetDocuments and DocSolid has been notably smooth and easy. Now we are looking forward to growing that relationship through DocSolid’s Postmark for NetDocuments. Postmark will place a small barcode tag on any document printed from the DMS. Later on when someone is trying to decide what to do with that paper, they can look at the barcode and know that we already have that document stored in the DMS. If there are no hand-written notes on it, then it is an exact copy of what is in the DMS and can be destroyed. If it has notes, the paper can be scanned right to KwikTag, which will see the barcode and upload the one with hand-written notes back to the DMS, and again the paper copy can be destroyed. 

When we started our scanning initiative back in 2013 we took the long view. We knew that we could not make all the paper go away overnight. Getting buy-in across the firm would take time. Getting the technology and the processes in place would take time too. We never had the goal of becoming a paperless office, or scanning just for the sake of scanning. Our goal was to make life easier for everyone in our firm and make possible efficiency gains, mobility and reduced risk. Now, four years later, we are actually in a position to make every file cabinet in our office go away. No attorney is going to be tied back to our physical office by their paper records. They can access anything from anywhere. That’s a goal worth working toward.