Entire Issue - National Association of Legal Assistants

Get ‘Wired’ for Savings
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Corporations are leading the way into e-procurement.
Because of the costs involved, law firms and other smaller
organizations are lagging behind. However, one way for smaller
organizations to take advantage of e-procurement’s benefits is
to consider using application service providers (ASPs).
By running their e-procurement and finance software on an
ASP’s hardware, a law firm can reap the benefits of e-procurement
without the cost of actually owning and maintaining the hardware.
Tying e-procurement to the firm’s financial system can make
the entire process virtually paperless. Sound unlikely? Take a look.
It starts with an electronic requisition that is routed automatically
for authorization. Office staff enters requisition data
only once, some of which can be supplied automatically. This
speeds up the process and reduces the chance for errors.
Once the requisition is approved, the actual purchase can be
handled a number of different ways. The person handling the order
can call up electronic catalogs from approved suppliers and order
directly from them. Some advanced systems can search approved
vendors for the lowest price and make the purchase automatically.
Once the purchase is made, receiving can be handled electronically
with electronic matching of the goods received with
the purchase order and invoice. Some systems automatically
notify the supplier that payment has been authorized so the
supplier can eliminate invoice generation and simplify the reconciliation
process. There are a number of steps, but most are
automatic and, in the best systems, are also paperless.
The key advantage to this is that financial data are automatically
updated throughout the process. Information is
always current, and office staff handling accounts payable and
purchasing will not have repeatedly re-enter the data. The
biggest saving, however, is in manpower. Electronic procurement
gets the job done faster and eliminates extra steps—not
to mention cutting costs of paper and postage.
If the firm does not tie its systems together, e-procurement
becomes an isolated step, with the purchasing information stopping
at procurement. The firm winds up with data stored in a
number of different places at considerable extra cost and with
greater opportunity for errors. Typically in such systems, much of
the process is handled manually with paper documents. The supplier
still prepares paper invoices and mails them out, while the
law firm cuts paper checks and mails them back. Checking current
purchases against budgets requires that data be drawn from
several sources, and even then the information won’t be current.
Automating the purchasing process, from requisition to payment,
creates a paperless procurement process that is fast and secure,
yet permits all users to share the information on a real-time basis.
File Pleadings Electronically
Despite widespread use of computers in law offices, the
filing of legal documents with the courts remains a labor-intensive
process. However, courts are beginning to replace or supplement
paper-based filings with electronic systems that allow
documents to be filed over the Internet 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. Many of these electronic filing systems are accessible
from any Internet connection by anyone, including the
general public. This means that lawyers can log on to the system
at any time and quickly locate or search documents.
Advantages of electronic filing systems are many. They simplify
and standardize the process of filing court documents; they greatly
reduce the resources devoted to generation, manipulation, storage
and retrieval of paper filings, including much less expenditure on
paper, toner, printer upkeep and repairs, photocopying, postage and
courier services; they reduce errors in copying and transcription; and
they facilitate access to and sharing of court documents.
The typical electronic filing system uses e-mail or a Web-based
form to transmit a document (motion, pleading, etc.) electronically
to the court. If e-mail is used, the document can be included in the
e-mail as an attachment or in the actual e-mail text. The filing
party provides proof of identity (such as a digital signature or a user
name and password) and some kind of electronic “caption” identifying
the case in which the document is being filed. Encryption is
used to ensure the security of the transmission.
The receiving court verifies the identity of the filer and
extracts both the contents of the document and the electronic
caption from the electronic filing. The court then sends an
acknowledgement to the filer, enters information from the caption
into the court’s case management system and files the
pleading appropriately.
Courts that adopt electronic filing systems benefit from a
drastic reduction in the amount of physical space required to
store case files and in the amount of time spent by court staff
searching for and handling case files. Data entry time is sharply
reduced because information can be automatically extracted
from filings and distributed throughout the system.
Efforts are underway to develop national technological
standards for electronic filing systems to spur the widespread
development of electronic filing systems by software vendors,
stimulate courts to adopt such systems, and ensure that such
systems are capable of interacting with each other.
Looking Ahead
At this time, many of the new Internet services are still in
early stages of development, but they are rapidly becoming more
sophisticated as new software and powerful computer languages
like XML (extensible markup language) increase the ability of
computer systems to “understand” the information in documents
and databanks. Such capabilities are already enabling lawyers and
legal assistants to search databases more quickly for very specific
information, and are helping eliminate redundant tasks such as
re-keying information and doing away with the nuisance of
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FACTS & FINDINGS / AUGUST 2003