Legal Research

Are We Any Closer to a Paperless Office?

By Shaunna Mireau

Happy Earth Day. Today is a good day to think about consumption.

The concept of the paperless office has been mentioned on Slaw in the past: How to Take Your Law Firm Paperless which links to a Lawyers Weekly article quoting our own Omar Ha-Redeye and Revisiting the Paperless Office to name just a few. There is also a great roundup on the Cyberlaw Central blog on “paperless” topics from the 2010 ABA Techshow.

A paperless office may not be universally achievable immediately in an organization but using less paper certainly is. Here are some easy things you can do:

• Store your stuff electronically, say NO to binders
• Save that email in your document management system
• Use your scanner
• Correspond electronically
• Fax from your desktop
• When gathering research materials – save first and print only if you need to

None of this is rocket surgery so I am sure we can all do our part. Is your organization moving towards a paperless environment? Have you achieved it? Share in the (paperless) comments…just don’t press print.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 22, 2010 (boomark / email).