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!
