ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

Elawyering, VLO's, Virtual Law Offices and how they work.

2010-03-22T00:37:00.001-07:00

The Future of the Legal Profession: Virtual Law Office

2010-03-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

Better get used to it, but the future of the legal profession is the internet, and not those fancy mahogany offices in downtown or those skyscrapers in the big city. Here's the lowdown on Virtual Law Office. Virtual Law Office

Workaround: Double sided scanning

2010-02-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, if you are using a scanner that only does one-side scanning, and you need to collate the even and odd numbered pages, I've got a workaround for you using Adobe Acrobat Professional. However, I should warn you that this will get ugly, but it will work.

First, scan in both the even and odd pages and have both pages stored separately.

Second, go to the odd page document and in Adobe Acrobat Professional, go up to "Document", then scroll down and select "Compare Documents". Then compare the even document with the odd document.

Adobe will then collate both documents and line them both up side by side so that the pages will go: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.

But here's the problem: you will see a bunch of really weird looking purple lines all over the place through your document. It is unsightly, but as I said, this is a workaround.

If anyone else has a better way, just post it and we will be appreciative.

However, the best way to do this from the beginning is just to select a double-sided scanner to begin with so you won't run into this issue.

What to look for in a Scanner

2010-02-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, if you need a scanner for your electronic document management, you're gonna need a quality scanner. EDM without a quality scanner is kind of like playing baseball without a mitt and baseball bat. Although quality scanners can be pricey for some people, they are well worth their price.

Rule #1: Get a sheet-fed scanner. Flat bed scanners won't do. It will be impossible to effectively manage your document management flow with a flat bed scanner. Plus, flat bed scanners are awfully cumbersome and ineffective.

By sheet-fed scanner I mean a scanner that will accept multiple pages and will automatically scan in several sheets of paper without you doing it yourself.

Rule #2: Get a scanner that does double-sided scanning. Let's say that you see a great magazine article that you want to save for future reference. (Of course, there may be some Copyright concerns, so some discretion is required) With a one-sided scanner you will have to scan the first side, then you will have to shuffle them around to do the even-number pages. And then you will have to manually collate them within Adobe in order to get them lined up. (I will give you a workaround below)

Trust me, you don't want to do this.

Rule #3: Get a scanner that does color as well as black and white. Yes, it is true that color is not absolutely necessary in most professions and for most assignments, but still, you may find it necessary on occasion to have color for various reasons.

Rule #4: Select a speed around 10-30 pages per minute. For some scanners, they will scan black and white at around 10-30 per minute, however, when it comes to color they scan at a snail's pace of around 2-3 per minute. This makes it time-prohibitive. Make sure you confirm the speed on color scans as well.

Rule #5: Go with a trusted brand name, stay away from the floozies. With scanners you get what you pay for. If you try to go low budget from the get-go you will just be screwing yourself over long term. Plus, there are FANTASTIC values to be had. For instance, you might know that the Fujitsu ScanSnap is around $400-500. But did you know that it ALSO comes with a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional, the best PDF software in the market. And this software, if you were to purchase it separately would run you around $300-$500? The Scanner almost pays for itself! The other scanners do NOT come with a free copy of Acrobat Professional. I'll let you chew on that awhile.

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2010-01-15T23:07:00.001-08:00

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2010-01-15T22:52:00.001-08:00

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2010-01-15T22:12:00.001-08:00

CES 2010 in Las Vegas: QUE™ proReader

2010-01-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

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One of the most popular products and new inventions heralded at the CES Convention in Las Vegas 2010 was the QUE™ proReader. The QUE™ proReader is similar to the Amazon Kindle, only better. It is flexible and it is about as thick as about 10-15 sheets of paper. Surprisingly, the newspaper industry thinks that the QUE™ proReader will save the newspaper industry. Which is counterintuitive, but they are searching for content partners and providers.

From observing the QUE™ proReader, it appears that although it is an amazing device, there is still a lot of room for improvement with respect to color. Right now it only operates in black and white. Personally, I'll be holding out for a color version, if one is on the horizon. However, all in all, the QUE™ proReader is an extraordinary device.

Que ProReader Demonstration

2010-01-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

Here is the demonstration of the Que ProReader. Again, it looks similar to the Amazon Kindle, but it makes the Kindle look like child's play. Of course, the anticipated price point will be several times higher than the Kindle as well.

How to operate and maintain your scanner.

2010-01-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

Tips and advice on how to operate your Fujitsu Scan Snap Scanner.

1.) When feeding paper in the scanner make damn sure there are no staples, paperclips, etc. Not only will this cause a jam in your scanner, but the staples and paperclips will scratch the glass interface surfaces and you will have a bunch of unsightly streaks along the periphery of your pdf's. Although this will not render your pdf's useless, it doesn't look nice, especially on color pdf's. Also, if the streaks are really bad, it may hurt your OCR capabilities.

2.) Purchase the F1 cleaner fluid recommended by Fujitsu. Get the fluid in the bottle rather than the wipes. The wipes are a lot more expensive and needless. Just get the bottle and use a clean, smooth cloth like a white T-shirt or other cloth with no color. Make sure you clean the glass interfaces first. There are two of them when you open it up. This is especially important if you do a lot of color scanning. Also, you'll want to do the rubber rollers as well. Cleaning the rubber rollers every now and then will help prevent jams. The reason is that as you do a bunch of scans, the ink from the paper will accrete around the rollers. This makes them sticky and less effective which will lead to more jams.

There really is no rule of thumb here on how often to clean your scanner. However, if you notice that you are experiencing more paper jams, and your pdf's have these color streaks going up and down the sides, then you know that it is time to clean your scanner. Those color streaks are basically residual ink on the glass that needs to be cleaned off. You don't have to worry about it taking a long time to dry. Perhaps 10-15 minutes and that's about it.

Don't worry, this process of cleaning it shouldn't take more than 2-3 minutes or so. So don't worry about it becoming too much of a chore or a pain in the as*. You will find that cleaning it will probably depend on how many color scans you do. You might not need it as much with regular black and white scans.

5 Tools you need to go Paperless in Your Office or Business.

2010-01-13T12:34:00.000-08:00

OFFICE EQUIPMENT YOU'LL NEED TO GO PAPERLESS

The main products you'll need to go paperless in your office are the following:

1.) Adobe Acrobat Professional: Estimated Cost: $400-$500 (see #2)

Adobe Acrobat Professional

is an indispensable program for storing, creating, and transferring documents. It is also great for automating forms. Say for instance, that you are a tax attorney running a big law firm. Instead of having a stable of paralegals working at $30/hour filling out the same forms, checking the same boxes and such, you can set up an automated document which will go ahead and automatically populate all the documents you need. You will still have to obviously type in the original information such as your name, address, and other information as well as that of your clients. However, once you get it all set up, this is a very powerful program. This is arguably the most powerful piece of software in the world, when used properly.

2.) Sheet Fed Scanner. Estimated cost: $400-$500 (Includes a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional free of charge, which is a $400-$500 value) There are not really that many decent compact sheet fed scanners on the market. But the one that stands out is the Fujitsu Scansnap Scanner. All the rave reviews you've heard about is all true, and then some.

This scanner is about the size of a small toaster and scans papers like a racehorse. It is not perfect, however, in that sometimes some pages get jammed in there. However, you will find that problem with all scanners and even those $10,000 massive copiers you get on lease.

It is extremely easy to use. You don't have to worry about powering it up, booting up and whatnot. It is always ready to go and you don't have to worry about setting up or opening any programs every time you use it. You cannot say enough about this device if you've had experience with other scanners and programs. And the price couldn't be better. Since it comes with a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional, the scanner pretty much pays for itself since the retail price of the software itself is about the same as the scanner. In fact, many people purchase the scanner from Fujitsu, and then turn around and sell the scanner and the software on Ebay and make some pretty good coin. That tells you what kind of amazing value you'll be getting.

3.) Cross-Cut Shredder. The idea is really to go paper-less, not completely paperless. You will, of course, no doubt be working with paper. However, rather than taking up hundreds of square feet in your office building, you'd be better off just shredding your hard copies and store them on your computer. Which brings us to our next product:

4.) External Hard Drive. Forget about those online services promising to store your information off-line. They are a ripoff. You'd be better to just buy up a bunch of hard drives, keep one at home, one in a bank deposit box, one at the office (you might want to lock it up somehow for security purposes) We recommend using a solid state hard drive instead of the hard drives with fans. We have not had a good experience with Western Digital hard drives. From our experience, over 50% of Western Digital Hard Drives crash and burn and die. So we recommend the iomega hard drives. Iomega comes out with a ruggedized version which can withstand a truck running over it and you can potentially drop it from about 15 feet in the air and it will be ok. We've never done the testing ourselves, but there is an online video by Popular Mechanics Magazine where they have their video tests of those ruggedized hard drives. And whatever you do, please purchase several hard drives, because you never know what can happen to your data.

5.) Email Fax. (Estimated Cost:$10/month) Unfortunately, even though most people are still using those stone age fax machines, you will just have to accept the fact that fax machines are here to stay, no matter how ridiculous they are. You will still have many, many clients, vendors, etc. who will insist on sending you a bunch of faxes, and they will ask, expect and demand you to do so likewise. For this reason, we recommend the Email Fax services. They are extraordinarily effective and they save on paper as well.

These services are great because the way they work is that you will get your own dedicated fax phone number. And as someone sends you a fax, it will arrive in your email and you just download it from there. Not at your office to view your fax? No problem. You can easily view the fax from your iPhone. And then you can forward it to whoever you want. And probably the best part of it is that you do not have to redundantly file it away in a cabinet or scan it back into your computer. All you have to do is re-name the file and save it to the appropriate place on your computer.

Sending faxes are quite easy too. For instance, say you want to send a fax to Irene. You just go into your email, make a new email, upload the pdf, to your email, and send it to (example): 18001289516@emailfax.com. Press send and you're good to go. The quality of the images is pretty good too.

Best of all is the price. They are usually around $10/month. Also, you can save around $200-$300 on the device as well as ink and paper. If you have a dedicated fax line at your office, you can probably spend upwards of $30-$40/month, not including long-distance charges as well. It also has the added benefit in that if you are on the road or on vacation you can access those urgent faxes quickly and easily from your email or your iPhone.

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

2010-01-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce our new blog about going paperless, and more specifically, Electronic Document Management.