Konica Minolta: Document management at heart of digitisation of legal sector
Whilst the pandemic has been a considerable challenge for us all, both socially and professionally, the legal sector has done surprisingly well compared to other industries. In part this has been due to the sector’s ability to adapt working practices. Many have embraced digitisation, collaboration, and communication tools to engage with colleagues and clients remotely, managing casework, administrative and process-driven tasks, including HR and finance, from home.
One segment that has be at the forefront in the digitisation of the legal sector is conveyancing. This has stood many of businesses in good stead to take advantage of the stimulus the government gave to the housing market, in the form of temporary changes to stamp-duty.
Coping with demand
At any time, increased caseloads equal more effort when it comes to the capture, processing, and storage of information and files, particularly if complex/protracted cases become unwieldy. This is especially challenging during a lockdown when paper-based documents require extra transit to reach their destination, but equally digital documents held in disparate data silos can be just as problematic. How do you prevent data or documents from being lost? How do you make data and documents easy to find and share? How do you manage permissions and access, to ensure sensitive information is secure and compliant with data protection regulations?
Firms that have migrated to Document Management Solutions, whether prior to or during the pandemic, are reaping the rewards through the digitisation, indexing and secure storage of documents. Happily, this isn’t just the preserve of large firms with deep pockets. there are scalable options available for any sized business. What’s more, the accessibility and availability of documents that these systems afford, will return even greater benefits as busy legal professionals work from home, office, chambers, courts, or wherever they so wish.
What is a document management system?
For those not familiar with document management systems, they are software which securely automates the end-to-end process, that begins with the capture and storage of a document, through to workflow processing and search. It ensures those with the necessary permissions can quickly and easily source, retrieve and interact with the data or documents via a centralised system.
A document management system enables your team to scan paper documents or input digital ones and automatically starts a multi-step document workflow – capturing data, updating the database, indexing the details, and storing the document. Once the data is added to secure cloud storage (such as One Drive or Box) it can then be shared with authorised colleagues, clients, or governmental/judicial services for collaboration or further processing. In many cases, back-office teams can also run batch jobs to automate the processing of large volumes of documents, fully indexing and archiving them en masse.
Flexibility for the future
The real beauty of this approach is flexibility. Many firms have grown or contracted to meet market demands and need scalable automated systems that support this. Many are now also considering whether to continue hybrid home/office working, perhaps with front-office legal and paralegal teams freed up to work remotely, whilst a small team of back-office staff process data at the premises. In other cases, a full return to the office is the best option. Document Management Solutions are perfect whatever approach suits the needs of your business and its clients.
On top of this, if you choose a fully managed Document Management service you also remove the CapEx costs of periodically updating your IT systems, replacing them with an affordable and predictable monthly fee – something which all business owners appreciate the value of.
The upheavals of the pandemic and constantly evolving legal sector landscape have been a perfect illustration of the benefits of running a well-tailored document management system. Legal businesses have had to find new ways of working with their clients and partners, whilst providing the same high standards of service. Modern digitisation and online tools have proven their worth time and again, ensuring firms can stay productive, competent, and highly dependable even when the most unexpected of challenges arrive.
For friendly expert advice on how Document Management Solutions can help your business, please contact business@konicaminolta.co.uk or visit: www.konicaminolta.co.uk/en-gb/solutions/it-services/rethink-document-management
