Immigration lawyer shares how her firm shuns paper, increases productivity

TAMING THE PAPER TIGER

Mira Mdivani has tried to work ahead of the curve her entire career.

To wit, when interviewing 15 years ago as a fresh-faced attorney, Mdivani lugged along a clunky laptop, when such machines weighed about 8 pounds and had three hours of battery life.

When her prospective boss, puzzled, asked her what it was, she perkily replied in her native-born Russian accent, “My brain!” Her prospective boss then turned into her actual boss, in part because he wanted to know all about this brain and what it could bring to the practice.

Flash forward and, 15 years later, Mdivani is still ahead of the curve: Her three-attorney corporate immigration law practice —The Mdivani Law Firm, in Overland Park, Kan. — is paperless.

In Mdivani’s view, resistance to a paperless existence comes from all corners of society, including the most strident of naysayers, clients and colleagues. But by taming the paper tiger, offices can become more productive and more prosperous.

Mdivani says she is saving about $110,000 a year per attorney, which includes costs for storage, copying and shipping, postage, paper, and cost of salaries, benefits and employment taxes for the two legal assistants per attorney. (Mdivani notes that all but two of the firm’s former legal assistants went to law school and all have moved onto substantive careers, including one who is a geography teacher, and another who is in law enforcement.)

What it first takes to transition to a paperless existence is the will. The system has to be easy to use, it has to provide a means by which access is instant and easy, and it can’t break the bank.

“The law business is a business, and the laws of business apply,” Mdivani implores those attending a recent presentation at The Missouri Bar Annual Meeting in Columbia.

Mdivani says several elements are needed to go paperless, the heart of which is a scanner, indeed a scanner on every desk. Also on every desk, a minimum of two computer screens, but three is better.

Here is what she recommends for hardware: Server, desktop computer with at least two screens, either laptop or tablet (or both), scanners, paper shredders and smartphones.

For software: MS Windows , MS Office, Outlook with Exchange server, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe, Acrobat Pro and
join.me (online meeting place) and Intuit’s QuickBook accounting system.

Once equipment is decided, bring on staff a “brilliant IT person and then train, train, train,” Mdivani says.

Develop a flow-chart for the paperless process and “really, really think it through,” she says.

And of supreme importance: file-naming protocol.

“I cannot stress the importance of this. This is very, very important,” Mdivani says, noting that clients today expect instant access and instant results. “This is what allows you to quickly access any information you need in an instant.”

On that same topic is setting up remote access and portability of information, so no one can make the excuse that the only way they can access the entire file is to lug around a big, fat paper file.

Another attorney who’s successfully taken the paper tiger by the tail is Michael Kahn, of four-attorney firm Kahn Gerber in St. Louis.

“We’re using the 21st century version of what we dealt with in the 20th century, whereby when you receive a document, the first thing you were trained to do was get a paper copy in the paper file,” Kahn says.

Now, Kahn says, the more normal process is to scan and shred.

“But the challenges of a four-person firm going paperless, say, to my old firm, which has well over 1,000 attorneys, is enormously different,”  says Kahn, who previously was a partner at Bryan Cave. “That’s what will be interesting to see.”

Finally, advice from other corners of the legal world that have gone paperless include:

Get rid of the fax machine. In fact, get rid of a fax number on all office stationery, letterhead, business cards and email signatures

Create digital signature stamps, so that documents don’t have to be printed out to sign.

STOP PRINTING. But at the same time, buy a new printer, a very expensive one that’s expensive to use, which will help change your behavior and others’.

“Resistance is strong, so that’s the first thing you have to overcome,” Mdivani says. “But once you get over the hump, it’s fun. You will find people come to love, love, love it!”