Digitizing Legal Files

From a paper-based to a digitalized law firm

Hekkelman is a law and notary firm based in the Netherlands. They were facing a number of problems, which made them decide to work towards a paperless office by digitizing their legal files.

One problem was that the paper files they were using were everywhere. It was hard to identify who was working on which part of a file. While what they really needed was to have the files completely available for several people at the same time. A second problem was that they have over 1,000 new cases every year, which was leading to storage problems. A third problem was that they wanted to give their lawyers the flexibility to work from anywhere, any time and to always have all the information they need available. The fourth issue was that emails were being stored digitally on the computer, while other information was only available on paper. The fifth problem was that every employee had their own filing system which was incompatible.

Taking all this into account, it was time for the organization to transform from a paper-based firm to a digitalized law firm where all information is available digitally, which means paperless offices and digital document storage.

The benefits of the IRISXtract™ and iManage Worksite system

The process of digitizing legal files start with scanning in the documents to the IRISXtract™ Digital Mailroom. There the documents receive an OCR layer and are classified based on their content. From IRISXtract™, the documents are transferred to the iManage Worksite document management solution.

What is so attractive about the iManage Worksite solution is that it’s completely integrated with Microsoft Office. Most lawyers already work with this, so to them the iManage Worksite solution is just an extension of that system.

Now with the new system Hekkelman is much closer to being a fully digitalized law firm with paperless offices. Everyone works with the same uniform way of digitalized information storage and sharing. So that’s a big benefit. It makes it much easier to move people around and information is quicker available to everybody. Additionally, the Hekkelman lawyers can now work with tablets. This way they can go wherever they want and instead of walking around with big bags full of paperwork, they have just one tablet under their arms with all the information they need available to them.

Information is quicker available to everybody. We give our lawyers the opportunity and possibility to work with tablets, they can go wherever they want instead of walking around with bags full of paper.
Maarten Van Zanen, Director, Hekkelman Advocaten & Notarissen