Document imaging (the scanning of a paper documents) has been utilized by law firms for more than a decade. While recognized as a more efficient means of document production, smaller law firms have resisted its use because they perceived that the cost was prohibitive.

With recent advances in imaging technology, this is no longer the case. Law firms large and small are recognizing that there are tremendous cost and productivity advantages to imaging document collections regardless of the size of the case.

Reduced Storage Space
Images are generally stored on CD-ROM's or your computer or network Hard Disk Drive. One CD-ROM can hold approximately 15,000 pages, or the equivalent of five stuffed bankers' boxes.

Another way of looking at it is that if you were to image your documents and place them on CD, you could store approximately 2,000,000 pages in the amount of space required to store one bankers' box! And if you store the images on your computer/network, you will not require any floor or shelve space at all.

Faster access to your documents
With the use of a fully imaged database, documents can be retrieved instantly, without the assistance of other staff members. Instead of waiting for someone to locate, pull from storage, retrieve, and photocopy a document, you can conduct a simple document search on your PC and open the document on your screen.

Once your documents have been imaged, a database of summaries/abstracts can be created on a local or network PC. Combined with OCR (optical character recognition), this allows for full text search and retrieval. Within the database each record corresponds to a single document, and contains a number of fields identifying objective information (i.e., Bates numbers, Document Date, Document Type, Title, Authors, Recipients, CCs, BCCs, etc.) and subjective information (i.e., Issues, Summaries, Comments, etc.).

Once a document database is constructed, the user has the ability to search the entire database, or perform field-specific searches (e.g., in preparation for the John Wilson deposition you can search the AUTHOR field of all records containing the words "John Wilson", "Wilson, John", "J. Wilson", etc.) The results will identify all documents authored by the deponent. Using a database to locate all the John Wilson documents will cut your deposition preparation time by as much as fifty percent (50%). By deploying the power of a litigation support database, you'll be able to find "HOT DOCS" that may otherwise have been overlooked. The ability to locate relevant documents once took minutes or hours , now it can be done in seconds.

Accessibility
Once your database has been created, you no longer need to work where the documents are. With the ability to copy the database onto a notebook PC, or to connect to your firm's network from a remote location, you can have access to all of the documents relating to your case (i.e., production documents, pleadings, etc.). You can even access imaged documents over the Internet from a web-based repository.

Increased Security
Once your database is created and your documents are scanned, they cannot be lost, edited or destroyed. Databases can be password protected and backed-up, providing greatly enhanced security over traditional paper photocopies.

Increased Productivity
Now that you have the ability locate documents within seconds, your associates and paralegal's can have time to do more productive, billable, work such as legal research, drafting of documents, witness preparation, and other aspects of case preparation. Imaging makes for a better-prepared case.

Cost Benefits
You may think that you need a large document intensive case to justify the expense associated with imaging and database preparation. However, with the advances in litigation technology, the increasing acceptance of its use throughout the legal community, and the declining costs associated with imaging and database creation, this is simply not the case.

For example, if you have a case consisting of 20 boxes of documents (50,000 pages), you will find that it may be cheaper to code and image your documents than it would be if you were to photocopy the same documents. Historically, you would make a copy of your original documents, bates label the copy set, make an additional copy as a working set, and make a copy set for opposing counsel. Using an industry average of $0.20 per page for photocopying, you would spend approximately $30,000 just for the document production phase of the litigation.

In sharp contrast to the above, the cost associated with imaging the same documents and would be approximately $0.25/page. Therefore your costs would be approximately $12,500. If you were to produce a copy set of these images on CD to opposing counsel you can expect to spend another $250. Therefore, your total cost associated with the document production phase of the litigation would be approximately $12,750, (a savings of 57.5% or 17,250).

The cost associate with having your images linked to a coded database may seem like a large initial outlay, (approximately an additional $0.35/page), but once you factor in the reduction in space required to store your documents, opportunity costs of the ability to locate and access your documents faster, the enhanced security, and the increased efficiency of you and your staff, you will see that there is a tremendous cost savings to your client, and an increased ability for your firm to utilize its resources for other matters.