Legal firms need to exchange information not only with the clients, but also with third-party organizations such as Courts, Arbitrators, Government Business Administrations, Tax Departments, opposing lawyers, independent experts, witness' and their lawyers, etc. Documents coming from clients may include attorney authentication, corporate bylaws, certificates, intellectual properties & assets, shareholder meetings, board minutes, contract and agreement drafts, some paper evidence & communications, etc. Documents coming from third parties include litigation pleadings, complaints, indictments, correspondences, discovery requests, depositions, subpoenas, affidavits, briefs, motions, court orders, dismissal sheets, appeals, notices, ordinances, contracts, warrants, bills, etc. Most of these documents are paperwork and aren’t easily accessible for quick review and for sharing throughout the firm.

Without an IT system to process, preserve and manage the paper document, a law firm’s operation cannot be automated, production efficiency cannot be increased, and many inconveniences confront the clients and third parties. A general solution is to implement a Document Imaging Management (DIM) system, which will digitalize the paperwork and solve the problems mentioned above, as well as facilitate exchange with other legal practice software and improve processing efficiency in all aspects.

ExperExchange designed and developed a DIM solution, DocuGuidanceTM, which has been deployed by many law firms with minor customization and configuration work. DocuGuidanceTM consists of the following modules (Fig.1):

Fig.1 DocuGuidance DIM System

o Scanning Station
o Imaging Server
o Document Server
o TypeReader Monitor
o Labeling Station
o Indexing Server
o Document Imaging Explorer
o Web Server and Explorer

The documents will be stored in the Document Server after OCR and labeling. The lawyers and assistants can then access this data and perform queries, search, view, annotation, edit, print and other operations through LAN in the legal firm’s office, or a web-based interactive interface from any place outside the office with Internet access. DocuGuidanceTM will make it possible to collaborate amongst lawyers/assistants in a team, and to share documents within the whole law firm.