On 6 September 2010, Abney Garsden McDonald solicitors took the plunge, and went paperless. In a previous article I described the process of evolution from conventional paper files, through scanning all incoming correspondence in 2003, to “paperless” a year ago.

We now have clean desks, fewer filing cabinets, large bins for shredding on each floor and two screens to look at, rather than one.

We do child abuse compensation cases, which involve the receipt of large bundles of records. We have to choose whether to scan them in or not. The rule is that if the paper is more than an inch thick it probably will not be scanned in.

We had planned to use pdf bundles for all counsel and medical experts. However, they do not always agree, so we now have a hybrid situation where some bundles are sent on paper and others electronically. Drop Box is a secure online delivery system for digital documents and is free up 2 gigabytes of data. It comes into its own when the firm’s in-house email box limit is exceeded and the vital bundle you want to deliver in a hurry simply does not arrive. Our email box limit is set at 30 megabytes. Large court bundles can easily exceed this limit, hence the need to send the bundle by some other method.

Many judges and counsel prefer lever arch files rather than digital images. We find that if we send digital bundles, they are often converted into paper at the other end!

To make image files searchable, we have to use OCR (optical character recognition) which is possible with Adobe Acrobat, but not always successful, particularly if some of the documents are of poor quality or handwritten.

We have saved only 23 trees, rather than the forecast 65, according to our shredding company Shred-it. This is because our forecast was based on the first month’s shredding, which was disproportionately large. We are, however getting rid of filing cabinets and space continues to appear in drawers. And we no longer need to carry huge files of paper up and down 3 flights of stairs.

One of our solicitors used to live in Manchester, but moved to Brighton. She dials in every day. She works without paper and cannot imagine a world of paper files. In a paper world she might have left us. We have some fee earners who work at home for some of the time. They no longer need to transport huge files backwards and forwards.

We share a broadband ADSL line with up to 20 other users. It keeps cutting out, and we cannot understand why. BT have failed to come up with a diagnosis. It is not a problem for internal users but for those that dial in. Thus we are converting for no increase in cost to a leased line. It is not commonly known that the upload speed of broadband is only about 300 Kb rather than the commonly advertised 20 Mb download speed. Those that dial in only get our upload speed. The new leased line has a forecast 4 MB upload and download speed which we hope will cure the problem.

We are also converting to the new BT internet telephone lines with a new digital exchange with the bells and whistles that we don’t have with our existing analogue telephone system, eg direct dial & voice mail.

Two screens have proved a big hit in the office, and a necessary addition when going paperless. Three screens would be even better. If you think about it, you might have at least two documents open at once, so it makes sense to replicate the desk with screens and the filing cabinet with computer folders.

Computer document management is essential and we could not have achieved the seamless conversion without our Proclaim Case Management system from Eclipse Legal Systems. This has a very efficient folder system for each case, so that all essential documents can be filed and organised in the same way as the conventional Word folder system. It also includes a good batch scanning system that saves the incoming mail direct to the case.

I would recommend any firm big or small to take the bull by the horns and engage in cost saving. There will be many objections along the way. Do not be diverted and have the patience to work through them.

Peter Garsden is senior partner of Abney Garsden McDonald Solicitors of Cheadle Hulme in Cheshire. The firm has the only dedicated child abuse compensation department in the country (abuselaw.co.uk). They run several group actions, and have a legal aid franchise. They have won several awards.

Email peter@abneys.co.uk.