Recovery after recent floods

Posted by: Kylie Wilson

 

I thought after Scott and Megan's articles about our paperless office it might be worth a practical story to see how much it does benefit our firm and our clients.  We know all about the recent floods and we certainly have some clients doing it very tough at the moment as a consequence.  I am not a city dweller and after all that rain I was cut off at my property for 2 days unable to go into the city office.  Problem? Not at all.  Whilst most lawyers would have been in full panic mode about work undone and no access to files, for me it made no difference whatsoever. I have everything at my fingertips electronically imaged and indexed. It is much quicker and easier to access information and prepare client documents from an electronic file, rather than from the large, cumbersome paper files.  So fortunately for my sanity and for my clients with urgent work to complete it was business as usual!
Another practical aspect of paperless files is for those parents amongst us.  As a mother of young children, it certainly helps when the unexpected and unavoidable interruption crops up during the work day (and they do!) to have access to my files and my clients via secure remote access from multiple devices.  So instead of being torn between work and home, I now have the tools to look after everything. All was calm in the Wilson flood zone!

Young lawyers perspective of a paperless office!

Posted by: Megan Tilbrook

I will still remember in my first week of working in this profession a senior partner describing to me the good old days of working with type writers.  He lived through one of the biggest changes in the way the profession worked when type writers left and computers took their place.  Efficiency increased, costs were reduced and the quality of work improved.  However some members of the profession never quite grasped the change and to this day I hear stories of senior partners who refuse to turn their computer on or use them to store paper on!

 As many of our clients and colleagues would be aware Anderssens is fast approaching a paperless office.  This is proving to be another exciting challenge to the profession on the same scale as that experienced all that time ago.  Personally I have been looking forward to 'taking the leap'.  The time, expense and hassle involved with maintaining both paper and electronic files will be a thing of the past.  Working in the area of Environment and Planning I have always been conscious of the large expense my clients are put to in preparing for trials.  While all paper cannot be spared it is exciting to know it is being reduced significantly by our firm. 

As part of the transition I have read articles on the "generational gap" that will no doubt develop during the process.  As a result, I thought that would be an obvious advantage in my being a younger member of the profession.  Having said that, working in such a dynamic, vibrant firm as Anderssens this could not be further from the truth.  Everyone, regardless of position or age has recognised its advantages not just to us as lawyers but to our clients.  We are now ready to take the leap and I for one am excited about no longer being tethered to paper.

A Game Changer

Posted by: Scott Thompson

As many of our clients would be aware we have occupied our current offices at 167 Eagle Street in Brisbane for 10 years.  In approximately 4 weeks time we will shifting to our new offices at Level 24,  12 Creek Street ( the building is also known as Comalco Place, or the 'blue tower').

This in itself is not groundbreaking news as businesses often move offices,  but the game changer is that when we move we are doing it as a paperless office.

If anyone's visited the back rooms of a legal firm you will quickly realise that lawyers just love to be surrounded by mountains of paper and files. 

Over the past 1½ years we have been planning to change the way our firm conducts business and that involved moving towards and eventually becoming a paperless office.  To achieve this we rolled out a new operating system in October last year which facilitates a paperless office model.  So you can imagine the amount of scanning, archiving and data entry that has taken place in our firm!

However, we are already seeing tangible and quantative benefits for clients and staff.  We provide quicker access to material, less delays to clients needing answers directly and more cost effective legal services. For our staff, they are no longer tethered to the office and can access the complete file, indexed, text searchable and categorised from their ipads, smartphones and PCs anywhere – which they do regularly now from our clients' premises or working remotely a number of days each week.

So finally, we have reached the stage where the last files are being scanned and we are packing to move to a new, purpose designed office space!  We explained to our staff that the new offices had no filing cabinets, no bookcases, no credenzas.   As the realisation slowly sunk in that we were at the last stage of this monumental project – our lawyers are definitely ready to let go of paper.