The LawBill Blog

The journey to a paperless office should not begin with the same old paper New Matter Intake Form.
The buzzword of the last few years, “paperless”, has finally trickled down to the small and mid-sized law firms which comprise our client base. Over the last 18 months the topic of “going paperless” has been discussed at almost every presentation we make to a prospective new practice management system client.

Some law firms’ clients require electronic billing or emailed PDF-formatted bills. Some partners have read about “paperless” and have concluded that spending less money on copy paper and photocopy charges is an economic and environmentally-friendly pursuit. Still others understand that if every outgoing and incoming document was systematically scanned and saved to the firm’s networked server, staff efficiency would increase as nothing could be misplaced and would be readily available to the entire firm.

Yet, despite these noble intentions, upon closer examination, every one of these firms initiate a New Matter in the same old way using a manually-filled-out paper intake form. Even firms which operate an otherwise very robust and sophisticated practice management system begin the process on paper. Recommendations to change this most basic step typically are received as heresy.

The use of a paper form typically is followed by these steps:

- One staff member is tasked to generate a Retainer Agreement;
- One staff member is tasked to record and store the signed Retainer agreement;
- One staff member is tasked to create the physical paper file and store the paper Intake form;
- One staff member is tasked to enter the client/matter information into the firm’s Billing system.

If the pertinent New Prospect information is entered directly into a correctly-configured practice management system:

The PMS Automatic Document Management system will generate the Retainer Agreement from the Intake Form info and store it in the system.

Upon receipt of the signed Retainer Agreement the PMS will:
- create a new firm Client and new firm Matter,
- notify the file room to create a paper storage file,
- assign a new Matter number, and
- transmit all Client and Matter info to the firm’s bookkeeping system.

The executed Retainer Agreement itself is then scanned into the PMS and attached to the Matter as a related document.

In many types of legal practices accident narratives, employment and medical history, union membership, family status and insurance information are collected during an initial consultation. By entering this directly into the PMS New Prospect screen form, it can be propagated throughout the database into the appropriate location automatically.

Enter Once, Use Many Times.

A firm seeking a true paperless practice needs to start the journey correctly. An electronic Intake Form is that first step.