Michael Herzog2022-07-27T12:54:59-07:00April 4th, 2022|Featured, Paper2Digital Blog, White Papers and Articles|
FULL ARTICLE PDF
Secure and Efficient by Design ILTA Spring 2022 – DocSolid.pdf
“The typical scan-to-email approaches are short-sighted and, in many ways, dangerous.”
Michael Herzog2023-09-22T11:42:47-07:00November 2nd, 2021|Paper2Digital Blog, White Papers and Articles|
Steve Irons is the Founder and CEO of DocSolid, a legal technology company that creates enterprise scanning, workflow and paper reduction solutions, i.e. DocSolid’s Paper2Digital® solutions. These patented Paper2Digital solutions are enterprise-level implementations deployed with unmatched consulting expertise to reduce the costs, risks and inefficiencies of paper records for leading law firms and corporate legal departments.
In an interview with IndustryWired, Steve explains how DocSolid swiftly created new software for the market during the onset of the pandemic to help law firm clients digitize daily mail and records room operations, mission critical functions in a law firm or legal department. The new software is DocSolid’s Airmail2 Digital Mail + Records Suite, and it transforms a firm’s paper-based mailroom and records room functions into streamlined, digital operations supporting work-from-home and return-to-office strategies.
Transitioning Law Firms: A Paper2Digital Transformation
DocSolid is an 11-year-old company that focuses on one mission— to help law firms through a Paper2Digital transformation. Historically, law firms are an entrenched paper-based operation because paper has long been the preferred medium of its producers of work product: the attorneys. Transitioning away from this long history changes the relationship to their craft. DocSolid provides the change management required to gain the buy-in from the attorneys, which is pivotal, as well as patented methods to manage scanning, printing and shredding in law firms, all tightly integrated with leading document management systems.
An Entrepreneur with a Digital Mindset
Steve Irons is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of DocSolid. He started DocSolid with the intention of addressing the burden of paper for law firms and, to date, the company has accrued 14 patents on the methods that the team uses for managing paper digitally. The most important thing about DocSolid’s patented technology is that it innovates in its marketplace to fix real problems. Over the years, the team has learned a lot about how to help law firms by building innovative technology that helps to eliminate paper from their existing processes.
Early Success and Driving Market Demand
Prior to the pandemic, DocSolid drove much of its own market demand by evolving a broad set of technologies and Paper2Digital solutions for law firms. At that time, it was a truism that about half of the attorneys still preferred working with paper. DocSolid’s methods were generally about changing the operations behind, underneath, around, without asking the firms to change personal behaviour— and the company has had success with that approach. Four of the top ten law firms in the US have Paper2Digital projects with DocSolid, as do many, many others. However, it was a highly bespoke business proposition every time. The team was capable of repeating the solutions but were tailored for each law firm, sometimes to each office.
Paving the Way During the Pandemic: WFH Solutions
The pandemic sent the law firm workforce into home offices and, initially, everybody worked hard to make that process stable, secure, and productive. DocSolid quickly realized that the only efficient method was to go digital, as it was critical for the attorneys to receive sensitive client information that was arriving by postal mail to their home offices.
Law firms had started to address this by building own makeshift digital mailrooms— scanning mail and delivering it as email attachments, which is unsecure and time-consuming for the receiving attorney. DocSolid has core expertise around helping firms manage the transition from paper to digital and this now includes building a new standardized digital mailroom for the law firms. The team went to work on it aggressively and delivered its market leading software in record time. In addition to the digital mailroom, the company has now launched a companion digital records room. The digital records room lets firms digitize their records rooms to enable removing paper footprints in each office as firms are now shrinking their offices in conjunction with the permanent work-from-home (WFH) posture that’s settling in.
Understanding the Target Market: A Drive to Success
Steve Irons is proud of how the company was able to pivot during these tough times. The team was able to completely change the business focus and create an impact solution for the target market. DocSolid went through a rapid, formal product management process, talking to the customers, prospects and partners. In a few short months, the team had its first version of software rolled out by working on that for about two months, then released the second version as MVP (Minimal Viable Product). The company listened to customer feedback and really stepped up their game, and the solution is evolving quickly as the company builds its base of customers and feedback loop.
Innovating with Expertise in the Normal Now
Airmail2Digital Mailroom and Digital Records Room were born in the pandemic. DocSolid saw what was happening and reacted by applying their expertise and courage. The company was remarkable in its ability to create a new solution as the team was dodging the COVID-19 bullet and suffering the same business slowdown as many small companies. The team envisioned that law firms would start believing that a large portion of the workforce wasn’t going to return to the downtown office, even in the post-pandemic times. They would need permanent digital mailrooms and the floor space dedicated to paper records would become an intolerable expense as they started to shrink their offices and their real estate budgets. Firms are making decisions about sustainable new operations adjusted for what DocSolid calls the “Normal Now”.
Losing Our Religion to Create Something New
Steve Irons does not give up easily. Before the pandemic, the company was experiencing incremental– but not breakthrough–success and he kept grinding. The team had to change their previous belief system in order to put forth a new category of solution that was much more targeted and tactical and back office. It was a big change— the team called it “losing our religion”— but the DocSolid team had to turn all efforts from concentrating on traditional solutions to create something new and risky.
A Paper2Digital Future
DocSolid believes that approximately 40% of the law firm workforce will work from home moving forward. New productivity methods, staffing models and standards will emerge and have to be built into best practices and sustainable solutions. Right now, law firms need to pay increasing attention to security and information governance. DocSolid is perfectly situated. The company jumped into that pool and started swimming with their law firm customers, helping them to digitize their records rooms and stay digital going forward. All firms were running paper mail rooms. Most firms still have records rooms but the intense need for real estate compression and distributed workforce won’t allow either anymore.
Every day is fun for DocSolid and another opportunity to innovate. Steve Irons looks out and observes a tremendous digital wave and the company is riding it forward. DocSolid intends to use their new solutions to be the innovative technology partner a law firm needs for its paper-to-digital transformation.
Michael Herzog2025-02-06T12:28:14-07:00June 28th, 2021|Featured, White Papers and Articles|
Law Firms Go Hybrid,
Records Rooms Go Digital
Free White Paper 2nd Ed.
Eliminate the firm’s paper footprint for real estate optimization
Keep attorneys and staff productive wherever they work
Stop the flow of paper records to offsite storage
“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.”
– Jamie Blomquist, CIO at Maslon
“The Digital Records Room was a key component of building a truly comprehensive information governance environment.”
– Deb Rifenbark, CIGO, IGP, CRM, Director of Information Governance, Stinson LLP
Fill out this form for immediate, complimentary access to this white paper
Michael Herzog2022-06-15T13:11:40-07:00June 1st, 2021|Featured, White Papers and Articles|
Distributed work in some capacity or other is here to stay, and if that means continuing to scan inbound postal mail as an attachment to an attorney’s email, this brings us to the question: Should we be concerned about IG now?
Should the mailroom now be owned by the information governance arm of the firm?
Pre-pandemic, this wasn’t a necessary consideration. Then, when the pandemic hit and sent the workforce to home offices, most law firms quickly started scanning to email to get the mail out. Facilities management or available clerical staff went into the office and cobbled together this new work process. In the midst of the crisis and no indication of its duration, it is likely to say that no firm had information governance on its mind once again.
Mail has been a perfunctory function aligned with other physical office services, but the pandemic shifted mail to a critical, and digital operation. The proportion of U.S. lawyers who now want to work remotely at least one day a week has doubled from the pre-pandemic period.
Legaltech News Article
Michael Herzog2021-02-22T11:54:54-07:00December 2nd, 2020|White Papers and Articles|
PREVIEW:
Law firms need a best practice Digital Mailroom operation, not the current scan-to-email workaround, which was a triage solution at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Attorneys and staff working from home must have reliable, secure delivery of daily mail which is arriving at the main office.
The Digital Mailroom remains essential when the workforce returns to the office. A significant part of the workforce will work from home semi-permanently, and it isn’t viable to hand deliver paper mail for those in the office today, and also provide an alternate digital delivery system for those at home.
Law firms are critically dependent on in-bound paper mail from clients, courts, opposing counsel and research sources. Some of these paper mail items mandate a calendared response, or contain sensitive client information, or crucial matter content. Starting now, inbound paper mail needs digital delivery, all of the time, for everyone.
Michael Herzog2021-11-01T11:34:05-07:00November 25th, 2020|White Papers and Articles|
PREVIEW:
As we continue to find ourselves working outside of our usual offices, many law firms are finding that they need a Digital Mailroom, not an ad hoc scan-to-email workaround. That was a mere triage solution at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Attorneys and staff working from home require reliable, secure delivery of inbound daily postal and overnight mail arriving at the main office. And they need on-call access to paper records back in the main office file rooms. A productive, secure Digital Mailroom operation is the most practical solution.
A Digital Mailroom also remains essential when the workforce returns to the office. A significant part of the workforce will continue to work from home semi- permanently, and it won’t be viable to hand-deliver paper mail for those in the office while also providing an alternate digital delivery for those at home. Legal mail needs digital delivery, all the time, for everyone.
Law firms are uniquely dependent on inbound paper documents from clients, courts, opposing counsel and research efforts. Some of these paper items mandate a calendared response, or contain sensitive client information or crucial matter content.
GET THE FULL STORY BELOW:
Michael Herzog2025-02-07T15:37:04-07:00November 1st, 2020|Featured, White Papers and Articles|
7 Reasons to Upgrade to a Digital Mailroom 2nd Ed.
Digital distribution of daily mail is mission-critical
Legal mail must be delivered to the DMS, not as ungoverned PDF email attachments
A Digital Mailroom operation can be transformational
SOLUTION: Define the requirements for your law firm’s Digital Mailroom operation
Upgrading to a structured Digital Mailroom operation surfaces specific requirements, which should be documented and accounted for. Productivity, security and reliability are essential.
Scanning sensitive client information and sending those documents to the recipient(s) as email attachments increases the firm’s exposure to a variety of security risks. It also impedes process integrity and undermines a firm’s information governance.
Daily mail is mission critical so digital delivery is essential.
“With Airmail2, sensitive mail information goes from the mailroom directly into NetDocuments, where it is protected and governed by our DMS best practices. And Airmail2 leverages our broader use of the DocSolid Paper2Digital platform, and its integrations with NetDocuments.”
– Jamie Blomquist, CIO Maslon
“Inbound legal mail needs to get in the DMS, not the email system where it is delayed and exposed. Airmail2 is a digital pivot into the times ahead.”
– Steve Irons, President DocSolid
Fill out this form for immediate, complimentary access to this white paper
David Guilbault2023-09-22T11:43:16-07:00September 30th, 2020|Paper2Digital Blog, White Papers and Articles|
When the pandemic sent the workforce to home offices, most law firms quickly started scanning daily mail to email inboxes. Facilities management or mailroom staff went into the office and cobbled together a new work process to accommodate this method of digital delivery. But delivering scanned mail via the email system compromises the security, compliance and the integrity of the process.
Email is a highly susceptible point of security and compliance in the lifecycle of matter documents and client information. And it has proven to be a poor workflow management tool and perhaps more importantly, nearly impossible to govern.
Legal documents arriving in daily mail should not be delivered via scan-to-email for these reasons:
Clients pay attention to this. Year over year, the ACC survey of Chief Legal Officers show that the governance and management of their information is a top concern. Accordingly, law firms have invested heavily in document management systems (DMS) to store client information. The DMS has become the primary productivity and governance tool for firms to service clients and protect their information. Therefore, the DMS should be the delivery platform for scanned daily mail.
Lawyers and law firms storing documents outside of the DMS expose the firm and its clients to multiple layers of risk—financial, ethical, regulatory and security risks. Such exposure is magnified by a new scan-to-email delivery of legal mail to remote workers.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that our shift in operations to include a home workforce is not temporary. Therefore, law firms need something better than the patched together scan-to-email process established earlier this year.
Forced to use existing copier-based technology, law firms are jamming mission-critical mail delivery through a system designed for ad hoc use where scanning occurs one document at a time. Quality checks are difficult and unstructured, evidenced by the fact that scanned mail is still retained in makeshift filing boxes, or delivered to empty desks for later pickup and review.
If the firm’s existing scanning system and email platform is not well suited to take on this important application, what does a modern, compliant mailroom operation look like?
The modern mailroom is a digital operation, comprised of software, process and clerical workers. The operation is founded on productivity, security and reliability. Software and process enables current clerical staff to work efficiently and with minimal training. They scan, QC, and securely deliver daily mail as searchable PDFs to a legal practitioner’s daily mail folder in the DMS, e.g. iManage or NetDocuments. Digital mail delivered into the DMS should accommodate the options of delivering to attorneys, their assistants, profiling staff, or even directly into the matter when teams are sharing work.
Mailroom software should make DMS deliveries using existing secure methods, but not require mailroom operators to have DMS logins. Nor should mailroom operators need to learn complex profiling procedures, or unique and changing delivery preferences and notifications for mail recipients. The solution must support batching of work – such as profiling, stack scanning, and QC checking. It should enable scanning with in-place multi-function copiers or scanners, without adding hardware, software, or requiring complex or error-prone keystroking while standing at an office machine.
To provide operational integrity, firms will also need automated quality controls for the process, a remote help desk and reporting.
The good news is that a Digital Mailroom, run optimally, now routinely digitizes the biggest remaining flow of inbound paper documents – daily mail. The better news is that longstanding Paper2Digital® initiatives will now accelerate, without the pushback from attorneys who insist on paper files. A Digital Mailroom now becomes the driver towards a conclusive Paper2Digital® transformation.
About the Author
In his role as VP of Customer Success, David Guilbault provides strategic vision and management for the Customer Success program and the Consulting Practice. Dave is a U.S. patent holder with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern Maine with more than two decades of experience in document solutions.
Michael Herzog2021-08-19T08:23:17-07:00February 12th, 2018|Case Studies, White Papers and Articles|
After Gilbert LLP migrated their document management system (DMS) to NetDocuments in 2011, they gained some capabilities the firm had long sought. Their file system had improved search, accessibility from anywhere, and a built-in disaster recovery. But, the firm still had too much information locked up in paper and improperly organized scanned records.
In the article “Access from Anywhere: DocSolid and NetDocuments Free the Information in Paper” Frank Schipani, Director of Information Technology at Gilbert LLP, discusses how the firm made the decision to adopt DocSolid’s scanning solution, KwikTag Legal. The decision drove paper records to the firm’s DMS and a provided search solution and mobile accessibility.
Michael Herzog2018-05-23T23:29:42-07:00October 16th, 2017|White Papers and Articles|
Legal practices which use paper to maintain an official matter file put themselves and their clients at risk. Rather, if the firm digitizes records in the normal course of business, the paper records can be shredded and with them, their associated costs and risk.
This Los Angeles Times article offers a vivid example. The new president of a California homeowners’ association recounts how they replaced the group’s attorney of more than 30 years, and discovered that all records older than 10 years had been destroyed without notifying the association’s board.
In response, authors Donnie Vanitzian, an arbitrator, and attorney Zachary Levine offer the new HOA president options for possible legal resolution as the association seeks the return of its records. They note that it’s common for legal engagement letters to specify that records may be archived, then destroyed after specified periods of time.
While the relevant state law doesn’t address how long an attorney must retain client files, they say “every attorney has a duty to return client files on request absent a prior agreement.”
Digitized records are an obvious solution, and DocSolid’s Paper2Digital solutions enable a seamless workflow for eliminating these kinds of problems, and driving a full electronic matter file within a firm’s document management system (DMS).
KwikTag Legal, an integrated scanning platform which embeds capture within law firms’ existing document management software, manages inbound paper from the first point of entry, through a scanning and profiling process, with built-in quality control checks to enable confident shredding.
Postmark identifies paper documents that have been printed in-house from an electronic document already filed in the DMS. Postmark prints a small bar code in a corner of the document. This bar code branding on the paper denotes that a corresponding electronic copy is filed in the DMS. After the paper document is used, it can be destroyed instead of filed at any stage of the paper lifecycle. Postmark alone can reduce a firm’s filed paper records by 50-70%.
As records are digitized, a firm can then update its engagement letter, informing clients that it keeps an electronic matter file in the DMS, and that an electronic copy is available upon matter closing. It can also note that any papers of record that have not been scanned into the DMS will also be provided at closing.
The updated letter should also specify that all matter material will be maintained for a prescribed time period and then destroyed. It can provide for a second notice to the client as well. The update should also specify that the firm does not house the client’s original paper documents and describe how it scans them upon receipt, incorporating them into the DMS, then promptly returns the originals.
Document retention problems like the one faced by this homeowners’ association can create costly, time-consuming disputes, but DocSolid’s Paper2Digital practice easily prevents them from arising in the first place.
