Nuance Communications, a voice recognition software company, released a report this week detailing what trends law firms may see in 2013. In an industry that requires security and processes large volumes of documents, there are a number of new innovations that can help legal offices become more efficient in the next year.
One of the trends the company stated is likely to continue into this year is the use of smartphones and tablets. According to the press release, more than 40 percent of law firms use these devices regularly, while also “increasingly using software that integrates with employer-approved cloud storage services and secures printing from mobile devices to streamline access to documents anywhere, anytime, while also safeguarding security and confidentiality.” By combining cloud services and digital documents, the use of portable devices may continue to be the norm.
Another major trend Nuance found is the use of eFiling and eDiscovery. With both these trends, increasingly more firms are using electronic documents for filing and for the beginning phase of a litigation, and some firms are even requiring it. However, this also means documents must be converted into PDFs, which firms can use media conversion services and document scanning services to ensure documents comply with legal standards.
With these trends in the legal sector, other offices may also find themselves either required to become paperless or simply encouraged to do so because of the environmental and efficiency benefits. And as the majority of legal offices go all digital, attorneys and lawyers may find it easier to keep up by also turning to a paperless system.
Tab Service Company is a leading provider of document scanning and data entry services. As an SOC2-approved service organization, we apply industry-best practices to our approach with clients.