Legal Document Management: Through The Eyes Of A Paralegal
I have been a paralegal for many years now, and I have been in quite a few offices. I understand the need for legal document management. When a firm has both the paper documents and the computer based documents retrieval can be difficult. Legal document management can be done entirely on the computer without the need of files other than for actual court preparation. Attorneys are like stubborn old mules once they learn something one way it is hard to change their opinion and their system. As with any system the legal document management should make the workers life easier, which is necessary when you have a stressed out paralegal who is running the office and balancing ten files on her head. Or at least you can feel like that at sometimes. When you have cases that are complicated especially divorce cases that have stacks and stacks and stacks of discovery you need a method where you do not have to go digging through a billion boxes in an over crammed under lit closet. Been there done that it is no fun at all. Meanwhile you have deadlines approaching like a freight train and you are still looking for one misplaced document.
While attorneys are not the most organized creatures in the world, regardless how they look in court, they are nowhere near organized. If all the documents were stored in a good legal document management software it would make the office run much more smoothly. It would not slow down the freight train of the deadlines but you will not feel as much pressure meeting them because you can find all the documents and all the evidence in one spot. The hardest part of the entire system is integrating into your existing system. While you still can have the hard files for court, anyone drafting documents should be able to refer to faxes, images, other documents and even emails through one system. You should know that once this is done maintaining it and keeping all your documents stored safely on the computer is a much easier and better way. |
