In-House Counsel

About $600 per year is the estimated cost of paper and ink for a typical employee printing 10,000 pages (6 cents per page). That figure comes from an article in the NY Times, July 5, 2009 at BU3, about GreenPrint, which sells software that makes it easy not to print junk at the ends of documents, such as boilerplate at the end of airline tickets.

Ink is expensive. At a cost of $40 to $80 an ounce ?it makes Dom Pérignon Champagne look cheap at about $5 an ounce.? I am sure that the average in-house attorney churns out more than the average number of printed pages so the savings from printer savviness would be that much greater. Other ideas that save money and the environment from printing changes have appeared on this blog (See my post of April 27, 2008: print double sided and stop printing cover pages; Oct. 12, 2008: power down printers, put recycle bins next to printers; Nov. 9, 2008: print in draft mode; Jan. 18, 2009 #1: office workers consume about 130 pounds of printer paper per year; Oct. 18, 2006: for confidentiality, put printers in offices of lawyers; and April 17, 2007: remanufacture printer toner cartridges.).