The Datamax Thinking Blog

Educating, collaborating, and sparking ideas for maximizing the technology that matters.


Document Management Can Help With Court Document E-filing

Fotolia_96795950_Subscription_Monthly_M.jpg

If you take advantage of document management software for productivity – and use your copiers as the beginning of an automated document process – you’ll add to your bottom line.

For 19 months from 1860 to 1861 the Pony Express was the fastest way to move information from coast to coast. Leaving from St. Joseph, MO or from Sacramento, CA; the relays of riders could make the 2,000 mile trip in 9 to 12 days.

Couriers are important. Wells Fargo began as a courier service, transporting packages and gold (remember all those stagecoach robberies in those old Westerns?).

Ponies? Stagecoaches? Why am I talking about this?

Today’s couriers are the less romantic descendants of The Pony Express and Wells Fargo. If you’re still using couriers to move physical (paper) case files and documents from your office to the client to the courthouse, you aren’t using a pony, but you’re still using 19th century methods in the 21st century.

You can do better.

For court cases in Arkansas, you’ll have to do better for The 7th Judicial Circuit in both Grant and Hot Spring Counties because eFlex filling becomes mandatory for each this summer. Read more about electronic court case filing in Arkansas on the Arkansas Judiciary website.

Costs – Dollars and Time

Constantly having to schedule courier service is a drain on your time throughout the day. While you may have your courier service on speed dial for one-touch dialing; one-click (OK, it’ll take more than that) e-filing is a simpler and faster process.

Costs vary, but paying a weekly or monthly invoice for courier services will add up. If you take advantage of document management software for productivity – and use your copiers as the beginning of an automated document process – you’ll add to your bottom line.

Document Management Can Help

That “e” in e-filing is short for, of course, “electronic.” Digital document management software brings more advantages to your company than the ability to share them digitally:

  1. Save space – digital files take up less space than filing cabinets
  2. Ability to find documents fast – 20% time savings based on filing and retrieval efficiency (Laserfiche)
  3. Collaboration – be sure you’re always working on the right version of a document, on your own or as a team.

There are many benefits of document management, click here for a quick summary.

E-Filing Works

Now, we aren’t lawyers ourselves and I’m sure it’s not quite as simple as the marketing would have you believe – in any huge implementation such as this there will be a few glitches. That said, in the long run, e-filling will boost law office productivity.

I’m not suggesting that you’ll never need to print or use a courier service again. But document management will help with any scheduled or future e-filing mandates in Arkansas. Best of all, document management will help your business organize it’s documents and become more efficient.

Be sure to look into DocCare, our planning to implementation document management services.Click here to learn more about DocCare.

New Call-to-action 

Topics: Legal Solutions Document Management