Ross Kodner of Ross Ipsa Loquitur gives us six great tips about going PaperLESS. Going paperLESS was the best thing I ever did. Sitting on my laptop is a copy of every document in every case I currently have open. This means that I can work on any case, anywhere I happen to be. Plus, I can easily and quickly find any document in any case in a very short period of time, all without opening a single physical file.

Ross’s best piece of advice is:

3) There’s no halfway in this process – the two easiest approaches are either (a) scan nothing, or (b) scan everything. Scanning just SOME things guarantees failure. Why? Because if what is to be scanned is left to anyone’s discretion, invariably they will eventually make the wrong decision and not scan something that really should have been. If a lawyer who is told they will be able to see a “complete” client file in electronic form on their PC screen stumbles across just ONE situation where some key document wasn’t scanned and thus, a file they were expecting to be comprehensive, wasn’t . . . the process will die right there from lack of confidence. File fragmentation creeps back in when someone says, “ok, I can look at MOST of the file onscreen, but since I can’t trust that it is complete because someone might have decided not to scan something, then I have to waste otherwise billable lawyer/staff time again looking for the paper that might not have been included.” It’s really all or nothing in my experience. In-between doesn’t work.

Jump over to Ross’s blog and read the rest of his post.