Today, data entry and data conversion are the major goals of law firms handling huge volumes of data. To manage their data and enhance the services they provide, lawyers need to convert their legal paper documents into electronic formats that allow accurate and speedy processing. To reduce clutter, save space, move to a paperless office and improve file access and organization through digitization, most law firms are opting to outsource their data conversion tasks.
Legal Data and Document Conversion – Factors to Consider
Before migrating to a paperless system, lawyers need to assess their existing system and plan the digitization move. The following factors have to be considered:
- How to preserve the integrity of the original documents – this is important because all judicial branches require records to be retained for several years.
- All the existing documents – both paper and electronic – have to be reviewed and a proper digitization plan has to be developed.
- Determine software and hardware requirements for office automation.
- Make rules for the staff to follow regarding document scanning and conversion, that is, decide when documents will be scanned, how they will be date stamped, whether documents will be destroyed or returned to the client, and how to protect confidential information.
- Risk management – consistent procedures are needed to prevent document loss, ensure file security, archiving, and backup. Procedures have to be updated to include electronic disaster recovery.
How Outsourcing Helps Legal Document Management
In legal practices, automation is achieved with practice management software. These systems allow the lawyers to expand their practice, increase their profitability and boost efficiency. Outsourcing data entry can reduce the non-billable hours that would otherwise go into this time-consuming task in a law practice. A professional outsourcing company would provide services to scan paper documents and conversion of these scanned images of the documents into editable and searchable formats using the software application.
By entering legal information into legal software accurately and quickly, a reliable service provider can help create compressed searchable documents that can be easily edited, searched, stored, retrieved and exchanged. Proper entry of party names in the e-filing system ensures proper indexing of these names. Entry of data into legal practice management software would allow legal professionals to efficiently handle their basic functions such as
- Case management
- Contact management
- Document management
- Calendaring
- Time tracking
Efficient entry of the information will allow lawyers to view all client details at a glance. It will enable them to find the required information quickly and also enables authorized staff to access information from anywhere at any time. All electronic documents, forms, email and searches are organized and available in one centralized place within their system. Critical processes such as calendaring, organizing contact and case information and tracking billable hours would become automated with legal data entry into practice software. All this will improve functioning and free up time for core revenue-generating activities.
Choosing the right data entry company is crucial to improve the overall productivity of the organization with improved case-file organization, enhanced workflow processes, and increased billable hours.
