It may surprise you to learn that in today's law office environment, the copier is an underutilized tool.  It's not that law offices aren't copying and printing enough; firms are consuming paper in record amounts.  It's just that today's copiers can be so much more.

Unlike their analog ancestors, network-connected digital copiers — also known as multifunction peripherals or MFPs — have long been the office standard for copying and printing.  Until lately, few firms have used copiers as digital on-ramps for digitizing paper-based information and incorporating it into electronic business workflows.  This approach allows law offices to rapidly increase the information assets that are electronically managed, distributed and protected using their existing infrastructure.

International Data Corporation estimates the sale of laser digital copiers is on the rise, growing more than 20 percent in 2005.  With the widespread availability of MFPs in most law offices, there is now a way for all knowledge workers to move paper-based information into business workflows and legal applications.  Most importantly, legal professionals can do this quickly, easily, directly, inexpensively and securely using currently available hardware and technology.

Quick, Easy and Direct
Law office professionals no longer need to rely on a single-function scanner to transform hardcopy to digital for e-mailing or to incorporate forms, contracts and other paper documents into business applications.  Regardless of the back-end application, users can scan and preview their electronic documents at a digital copier and immediately send them through to a content management or e-mail system.  Application connectors on the back-end enable this to happen seamlessly, creating a powerful solution for routing, manipulating and storing paper documents.

If legal professionals are going to use the copier as an on-ramp to electronic workflows, then it has to be an intuitive system that becomes a part of — rather than changing — the existing work process.  Today's MFP document capture technology creates a familiar work environment for users.

Once the document is captured, legal professionals can index and store it — while still at the MFP — to a content management system using the same procedures they would at their desktop.  They can also send the document in secure encrypted format via e-mail.  If required, they can transform scanned items into searchable text PDFs for retrieval via search applications.

Handled directly at the MFP, the scanning and document distribution process is fast and easy to use, requiring little or no training.  IT administrators can configure systems to allow one-button document storage to a specific repository location or scan-to-mail to a list of recipients.  This configuration is particularly useful for repetitive tasks.

A business process often requires a law office worker to manipulate the document in some way by making annotations, redacting data or attaching an e-mail cover note.  Today's software solutions allow users to complete these tasks at the MFP or their own desktop computer — whichever is most efficient in their environment.  Providers are offering solutions that make document scanning and distribution to enterprise systems easy to use and seamless.

Security and Compliance
With so many legal professionals handling documents containing sensitive information such as client records or medical information, document security is important.  Because today's digital copiers are already connected to the IT network to allow networked printing capabilities throughout the enterprise, it makes sense to utilize existing network security for an MFP document scanning and distribution system.  Why reinvent the wheel?

In addition, law firms face continuing pressure to comply with government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Freedom of Information Act.  Overwhelming in their range and complexity, these laws boil down to three key information management challenges:  records management, privacy protection and information availability.

An electronic document workflow and storage policy can go a long way in helping to comply with these regulations.  For example, some copier-based scanning solutions can capture a record of scanning activities to maintain a log of outgoing communications for auditing.  The system keeps a log of what was scanned, by whom and when, how it was sent (e-mail, fax, etc.) and to whom it was sent.  This can truly help law firms create a useful audit trail of activities at the MFP as well as protect invaluable intellectual capital and assets.

Bottom Line Benefits
Maximizing the MFP as a digital on-ramp improves overall law office productivity and process efficiency.  To drive this increased effectiveness, document scanning and distribution software should be hardware neutral and support a variety of digital copier and scanner brands.  These considerations are particularly important to the bottom line as firms endeavor to leverage pre-existing investments in copier technology, often comprising multiple brands across the enterprise, making the solution easier to implement and more cost-effective.

When it comes to hard numbers, ROI comes quickly.  Replacing fax machines and couriers with scan-to-mail provides an immediate measurable return.  Scan-to-mail does not involve incremental costs.  It's also faster and results in a much higher quality image than a fax.  In addition, industry experts agree that a single misfiled document can be expensive, often costing more than $120 to retrieve.  On average, companies spend 25 hours recreating every document that is lost.  Simply put, not having a way to automate the document scanning and distribution process can be very costly.

Taking Full Advantage of MFPs
Despite how fast, easy, cost-effective and secure document capture and distribution may be, "few copiers have been used for this purpose," according to market analyst Harvey Spencer of HSA, Inc.  As he pointed out in a recent article, "Some [firms] may be using flatbed scanners, but MFPs scan faster and are frequently sitting idle in a convenient shareable location."  It's time for legal professionals to recognize the office copier as a powerful tool to streamline their day-to-day document scanning and workflow needs.

About our author . . .

Vickie Malis joined eCopy in November 2005.  She has more than 17 years of industry experience in high-tech and business services marketing.  Prior to eCopy, Vickie held senior management positions at Iron Mountain Inc.  Vickie can be reached at vmalis@ecopy.com.