About William Bailey
William Bailey is a small friendly firm of solicitors based in East Dulwich. The practice was established 15 years ago as a general practice to serve the local community. The firm now deals mainly with Probate, Wills, Litigation and Conveyance and has gradually expanded to a current staff of 9, with 2 partners, an assistant solicitor along with a trainee and support staff. The firm constantly strives to provide a quality service, while at the same time remaining approachable and friendly.

Getting to the source of the problem
The legal profession, more than any other, creates an enormous amount of paper. Each case can create hundreds of documents, with letters needing to be passed back and forth between solicitor, client and respondent repeatedly, with every stage means the creation of more paper work.

Being able to manage and organise huge case bundles is essential to the efficient running of a practice. This is an area where having a scanning system in place can make huge timesavings. Time spent hunting for misplaced pieces of paper can be totally eradicated if all-important documents are scanned and stored electronically.

Donna Thyer, office manager, William Bailey explains: "Our paperwork is enormous, it's easy to become overwhelmed and get drowned in paper! We wanted a scanner to turn paper documents into electronic files, so they were easier to file and manage."

Once documents have been scanned into an electronic form, distributing them to clients and colleagues - whether working in the office or from home, becomes as easy as emailing an attachment. Key documents can be made available to everyone on a central computer system, rather than having to be photocopied and distributed as hard copies, which are easy to misplace or misfile.

Scan and type...
Choosing a Fujitsu ScanSnap meant that there were also other systems that have been made quicker and easier. The ScanSnap scanner includes cutting edge character recognition technology, meaning you can scan documents straight into editable Word and Excel documents.

"The scan to Word function has been absolutely brilliant." Thyer explains, "We just put letters into ScanSnap and press go, in seconds it comes up as a word document that we can edit.

"The fact that you do not have to re-type lengthy documents or copy type the contents of an incoming letter into an email for a clients response is a great time-saver. In the Litigation Department it has been a great help as they were able to scan a 15 page draft statement prepared by a Barrister and make necessary amends before getting the client to sign it.

"Without the ScanSnap the secretary would have had to re-type the whole thing. As well as saving admin time, it also means that clients now receive the information almost immediately and no longer have to wait for the next day's post."

Saving the clients time
Scanning and then emailing documents saves both time and postal costs: "With so many clients preferring to use email, we can scan letters or anything that comes in and attach it to an email, which they will receive immediately. We have saved considerable money on postage, and drastically reduced our fax costs." Thyer explains.

Sharing information
Having information converted to an electronic format makes it a lot easier to find, as it's not locked away in a filing cabinet somewhere, but available on the desktop. Information then becomes a lot easier to share with colleagues, whether in the office or working from home.

"ScanSnap has been very useful in sending information to colleagues who are out of the office. Recently Mr Coombs, a partner in the firm, was preparing Reports on Purchase from home and I knew that he had a particular file with him. The Client had dropped off a copy of their survey report, which had thrown up a few problems with the property. I wanted Mr Coombs to see the survey in case he needed to amend the report in any way or needed to speak with the Client." Thyer explains.

"I was very impressed with the speed at which the document was scanned and it took all 18 pages with no problem. Before we began using the scanner we would have had to make a photocopy and bike the document over. We saved courier costs, print costs and valuable time."

Quick and reliable
Faxing documents is often a frustrating and time-consuming task, especially when the document contains a large number of pages. Inserting the pages in the right order, the right way up, waiting while the pages are processed, and then until the recipients fax is ready to accept the call; all contribute to user's stress, especially at times when getting the document to someone is urgent.

Scanning and emailing important documents instead greatly reduces time and user stress. Donna Thyer explains a recent instance where ScanSnap came to the rescue:

"Recently 3 documents (consisting of 26 pages in all) were faxed to a client in Sierra Leone. Two hours and 3 attempts later they had still not successfully been faxed. The client phoned to say she had received only 5 pages in all and that if we faxed 4 pages first, redialled, faxed another 4 pages and so on, she would probably get them. I scanned the documents and sent her an email with 3 PDF attachments in a matter of minutes."

Given the above example Thyer estimates that ScanSnap will reduce admin time at William Bailey by a staggering 75%.

Looking to the Future
"Through post, photocopying and time cost savings the scanner will have paid for itself within months" said Donna Thyer.

"I think the most useful feature of ScanSnap in the long term will be the fact that everyone can share the information so easily when it is stored electronically rather than on paper. With our case management system, incoming letters and documents can be scanned and filed on the computer allowing any person in a firm to update a caller on the current position of a matter without having to waste time looking for the actual paper file - this is a real revolution in the speed with which we can help clients."