Advice to Help Lawyers and Law Firms Go Paperless

In this episode of The Paralegal Voice, host Vicki Voisin talks with the State Bar of Michigan practice management advisor JoAnn Hathaway about her tips to help law firms go paperless. She shares that there are many procedural steps involved in transitioning a company from a traditional filing structure to a paperless system and that it's imperative to have a paperless policy to ensure that no one deviates from the process. She encourages any company embarking on this conversion to take inventory of their goals for going paperless and to decide what the firm hopes to accomplish by making this change. JoAnn then goes into her top ten policies that firms should implement if they are going paperless, like making your policy searchable and developing a feedback and monitoring system to determine the success of the transition, and closes the interview with suggestions of resources that law firms can utilize to simplify the process.
JoAnn L. Hathaway is a practice management advisor for the State Bar of Michigan. Ms. Hathaway previously worked as a legal liability claims director and risk manager, paralegal, and legal administrator. She is an Adobe Acrobat Certified Expert, and holds software certifications in LexisNexis Time Matters and Billing Matters software. She is active in the ABA Law Practice Division, serving on the Publications Board, Law Practice Today Editorial Board, and State and Local Bar Outreach Committee. She is a frequent speaker on law firm technology, insurance, and risk and practice management topics.
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