Federal Judiciary

Ream of Paper #4 Opened

By Michael Smith

One of the things I've told people about my new office is that with a practice heavily weighted towards federal court, where all filings are electronic, we've dispensed with paper files almost completely.  Of course we have CDs of document production and some paper where I've kept working copies of some briefing, but there are no true case "files" in our office, and certainly no file cabinets or shelves - half of one desk file drawer handles what little non-electronic case information there is and the actual "files" are all in electronic form on our server, with what little actual paper comes in our office scanned and discarded automatically.  Our office has a file room, but its shelves hold toys, since we've turned that into my boys' play (and study) room when they come to visit after school.
What brought home to me how unusual that is is this week, when my desktop printer ran out of paper and I had to open a ream of paper and realized that it is only the fourth we have opened in the five months my new office has been open.  That's less than one ream of paper per month, despite having three printers (which also double as our scanners and "copiers" although I honestly can't recall making a "copy" of anything since we've been open).  With the local rules requiring filing online and eliminating the need to serve counsel with copies of the filed documents we just don't have to print anything any more - documents go straight from files to e-mails and e-mails to files or "to be read" folders (and more easily than ever in the latest version of CM/ECF - it is literally one-click downloading of almost any document, including all attachments).
I'll be talking about the paper-less options more in an article on starting a new law office in next month's Texas Bar Journal, but given the interest our office's unique approach to paper I may be speaking on that more often - people certainly are interested in options to save file space and eliminate the cost and inefficiency inherent in paper-intensive operations.  Don't get me wrong - I still use paper - it's just the exception these days - not the norm.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).