Paperless law firm – Part 3 – Implementation and measuring success

Missed part 1 or part 2 of the paperless law firm series? Here is a link to each – Part 1, Part 2.

So, you’ve identified all the benefits, built a business case and generated buy in and now you need to start implementing, which is the fun part!

Here are a few steps to help you develop a rollout/implementation strategy.

• Identify a pilot group to be the guinea pigs.
  • Pick a workgroup/team or get a group to volunteer
  • If you have to pick (because you didn’t get any volunteers), don’t pick the easiest group or the hardest group. Try and pick a group that is middle of the road in terms of complexity and change resistance
• Measure workgroup specific stats before starting
  • How long does it take for the admins and lawyers to perform tasks with physical files? This could be file retrieval, archiving, filing, printing etc
  • How many pages are printed/copied in an average month?
  • How much physical storage space do they use?
  • Take a few photos of the messier (paper wise) offices/workstations in the group for comparison later
• Once you start implementing the processes from your business case, work closely with the group and gather regular feedback
  • Sit in their team for a week, every second day etc
  • Monitor how they are working without making them feel like they are being assessed.
  • Offer help and advice when you see issues
• Identify and streamline any processes that cause issues
  • Make notes of processes that you identify that are causing issues.
  • Work with the team to strategize how they could be streamlined
  • Update your business case/process document with the updated processes.
• Once team feels comfortable with process, gather final feedback and document lessons learned
• Measure stats again for the workgroup/team and compare to pre less paper stats
• Rinse and repeat with each workgroup or team within the firm, using what you have learned from each group to help the implementation.

Now that you’ve implemented and you’re working in firm with less paper, it’s time to measure the success of the project. Some ideas on how to measure success are;

• Survey team members on things like stress levels, efficiency, flexibility and general thoughts before and after the changes
• Performa a statistical comparison of time spent, floor space utilisation, printing costs etc
• Product a sustainability document that outlines the paper saved etc
• Identify the levels of risk reduction and ensure that you have discussions with insurers/auditors.

I hope this series has helped you tackle your less paper project or at least generated some food for thought.

Should you wish to speak further about the concepts and methods discussed in this series, please feel free to get in touch at jason@nymbus.com.au