'Tis the Season...

The season, that is, for your author to find herself so immersed in holiday goings-on that she barely has time to pen a blog entry or two. But while my extra-curricular self is basking in the busy and joyous holiday season, my office self has time-travelled to the New Year. I'm making all sorts of resolutions for 2010 as we speak. While I'm sure to add more, I have compiled a short list of projects I am going to begin when I get back from the holidays. Because I don't have several years of experience or an attorney with several years of experience using an assistant, please feel free to leave your own suggestions. I might just add them to my list to help our office become as productive and efficient as possible.

1) Monthly status letters. I've always wanted to do this, but I have gotten so bogged down in my many other duties that it has been pushed to the side for far too long. I'm not saying we don't keep in touch with our clients. We definitely do. I already send letters for every step of a case. But it is my goal to start sending letters even between steps, just to let the clients know we have not forgotten about them during a period of waiting in the case. I intend to give clients a rundown of their case over the entire previous 30 days as well as a heads up on what is to come. Again, while our office already keeps in touch with most of our clients on a week to week basis, I believe the monthly letters will provide a big picture view which will help explain how much progress has been made or perhaps why little to no progress has been made in certain situations.

2) Working 30 days out. I got this idea from Linda Whipple, who was quoted by Mr. Mongue at The Empowered Paralegal in his entry entitled "Combating the 'Hire an Out-of-work Lawyer as a Paralegal' Trend", as follows:

"I also work 30 days out from a deadline – got a pre-trial conference coming up? I’ve already set up the attorneys’ meeting, exhibit exchange (meaning I have my exhibits already prepared and ready for trial), and provided a draft of a pre-trial statement to my boss – this is a signal to Bob that we are now moving from 'pre-trial' mode to 'trial' mode."

While the Boss and I have a pretty smooth work flow, we have not yet reached a pace of 30 days out on anything. Sure, I look thirty days ahead just to see what is coming up, but preparing him for trial a month ahead of time? I had never even considered it until I read Ms. Whipple's comment. Granted, every practice is different, and with only two people in our office and my job duties including everything from taking out the trash to emergency case research, it might be nearly impossible to create trial notebooks and summarize depositions without another set of hands. Still, I would like to come as close to meeting that mark as is humanly possible. There is always room for improvement.

3) Paper - less. Yes, I know I had the audacity to denounce paperless offices once on this blog, and I still don't believe going completely paperless is time-feasible or within our means right now. However, since I have actually begun to think about it, and since we are running out of filing space here at the office, I am starting to see the benefits of using less paper. So, I'm going to focus on saving our electronic notifications to file rather than printing and filing them. I'm going to email clients when feasible and appropriate. I'll even try saving online research materials to file rather than printing them out. While we cannot go completely paperless, I believe being paper-less will have its benefits.

4) Curtains or shades for the front windows. What does this have to do with office administration? you might be wondering. Oh, dear reader, everything. On sunny winter days, I sit in a pool of sunshine. Beautiful though it may be, it is hotter than hot. Our big shop-style windows bleed heat into the office during the winter because the sun is angled at us from the south. This keeps our heating bills low, but it also keeps me in a constant state of persperation. I keep telling myself we need curtains or shades (something 50-60's style, to make us look classic), but I never remember long enough to do anything about it. So, starting in 2010, we will have shades.

There you have it. My super short list of resolutions for the new year. The Boss doesn't know about these yet, but I believe when I bring them up, hopefully this week, he'll be on board. In the mean time, I still have a few weeks before the New Year. If you have any tips or suggestions you believe could help a small law office (or me), please don't hesitate to leave your comments here.

Words That Do Not Mix: Paperless Law Office

I keep reading about all these strange entities called paperless law offices. I try to imagine a place where you don't go digging through endless D's to find the John Doe file (or numbers, if that's how your firm's filing system works), but it is difficult.

Perhaps the first reason I have a hard time envisioning a paperless office is that my own office is very paper-full. We print everything, from the e-filed orders to drafts of motions for review. We make copies of everything that leaves the office. When I am researching case laws, I print out the cases to highlight the pertinent parts. We print emails from clients to place in their files for quick future reference.

Now, I understand that everything we choose to print could actually be saved to file, and we could scan all of our paper documents into the system. But that is impractical for a law firm with one lawyer and one paralegal and, at any given time, fewer than 100 active client matters. I would spend much of my day scanning documents. Some days would be completely shot.

But let's imagine that we had a third person who's job was only to scan documents and store them. While we're at it, let's imagine that my office also has enough electronic storage for the endless amount of data being shoved into the system. It would still be impractical for my firm to go paperless.

First, I must print out research material for the sake of my poor eyes. It is unhealthy to stare at a computer screen for hours of reading. I also have to highlight the relevant parts. Second, since we keep copies of everything that leaves the office, we keep copies of all signed letters. It seems impractical to print a letter, sign it, then rescan it into the system before sending it off. At least, in our office it is.

And if time and effort cannot be saved, then going paperless to save paper seems silly, too. In my office, we would still hit the print button. But without a file in which to save the newly printed paper, we would shred it when we were done. In our office, that is a lot of wasted paper. In a medium to large firm, I'm imagining a ton of wasted paper a month as lawyers and staff print hardcopies to read or pass around or for various other reasons then dispose of them only to reprint the next time they need to have a hard copy.

I could have it all wrong. Perhaps being paperless is great. It's probably the next best thing, for firms that have the staff, the time, and the money to do so. One look at the dwindling space in our small office will convince anyone that files take up precious space. I am sure large non-paperless firms have entire warehouses devoted to file keeping. At my firm, our closed files take up one small conference room and half a storage closet. And those constitute only four years worth of a new firm's cases. If we don't move into a bigger place or find safe storage for our closed files, we will drown in paper within five more years. So I completely understand the benefits of going paperless. I just doubt it is as without paper as it sounds.