Law firms are facing a tremendous opportunity to reduce real estate, but paper-based records rooms are an obstacle to this.  As firms strategize real estate compression plans, eliminating floor space required for records rooms and ad hoc paper file storage is key. Not only that, but the new hybrid workforce of in-house and at-home attorneys cannot be supported securely or efficiently when records room workflows are paper-based.

The DocSolid white paper, “Law Offices Get Smaller, Records Rooms Get Digital” outlines a digital records room strategy and implementation plan. A digital records room is a firm-wide system of software, workflow and services, to digitize paper records to the DMS (including iManage or NetDocuments), replacing paper file rooms.

Jamie Blomquist, CIO at Maslon, comments: “There are essentially three use cases for transitioning to a Digital Records Room: reduce costs by reducing the footprint of paper so we can optimize our office space for higher value work; improve productivity and help attorneys have anywhere access to their files; and lastly, driving our paper files into one centralized DMS file helps us govern and reduce risk better.”

The white paper includes insights from information governance and records professionals and details IG and security requirements for a best practice digital records room such as:

1. Tight DMS / RMS integration with leading industry platforms such as iManage, NetDocuments and FileTrail
2. Vendor DMS expertise and solution flexibility so that a firm’s DMS customizations can be accommodated
3. In-house and outsourced staff empowered with DMS profiling-scanning capability without DMS logins
4. Enterprise software that matches a firm’s security regime
5. Avoidance of scan-to-email attachments or new operating repositories
6. Built-in auditing of the overall capture process, down to the document level
7. Paper document disposition-retention-shredding built into the process
8. Ability to segregate processes for confidential content e.g., HR documents

For more information about the DocSolid white paper, “Law Firms Get Smaller, Records Rooms Get Digital” go here:
https://www.docsolid.com/law-firm-digital-records-room-white-paper/