Assuming you somehow manage to become completely paperless, what do you do when it’s time to go to court? Most courts aren’t set up to be all digital.  They receive exhibits in paper form, and so you need to be prepared to deal with that expectation.

First of all, it’s important to note that the prospect of having to use paper at trial does not diminish the value of having a paperless system for all of your case files.  During the course of litigation you’ll save a lot of money, time and annoyance by not having paper to deal with.  If there comes a time when you are required to use paper, you’re still in a good position because all you have to do is print out the paper that you need.

Remember, that In the old days of paper you’d have boxes of exhibits that you shuffle around, and because you were working with the paper yourself there was some risk that you’d shuffle things up and lose an important document.

Let’s look at how ‘being paperless at trial’ plays out in practice.

Because you’re adept at being paperless you’ll be able to pull up documents that you need using your computer.  If your opponent introduces an exhibit you will be able to access it quickly, and see the notes that you superimposed upon that document.  The only time you need to worry about paper is when you are introducing your exhibits.  In federal court, you’d have already specified the possible exhibits in the pretrial order.  Most state courts have similar disclosure requirements.  In other words, a week or so before the trial you have defined the universe of documents that you are limited to using as trial exhibits.  No doubt you also specify that any document your opponent uses is available to you.  But the point is the universe of documents that trial exhibits can be drawn from is limited before trial.

These are the documents that you need to convert to paper (i.e. print out).

You, or your office staff, will carefully create paper versions of all of these documents in proper sequence (you determine what is proper sequence based on need, or preference). The boxes that contain these papers will not be disturbed once they are assembled.  Why not?  Well, because you are proficient at preparing your case digitally and don’t need to deal with the paper.  So, the paper is organized and then remains that way until you need it at trial.

The only thing you need the paper for is to introduce an exhibit.  So, for each exhibit you need one copy for the judge, one for the witness and one copy for each trial counsel that you would need to hand a copy to when you introduce the exhibit. You could bring a printer, but then you’d have to depend on the reliability of the printer to produce the paper on demand.  Plus printers can be noisy.  You might want one so you can print documents during recesses, but you’re not going to be able to rely on a printer in court as a primary way of creating the exhibits you’ll introduce.

You will want to use your computer to keep track of notes about exhibits, including whether a particular document was offered into evidence or not.  And whether it was admitted or not.  This doesn’t take very long to do, and you’re proficient with the computer so it’s not a big deal to you.  The key thing is: you have to be proficient and very comfortable with your paperless system before you’re ready to go to trial.  If you are proficient, then having to print out some paper to use when you offer exhibits is not a big deal.

If you’re not proficient then you shouldn’t take any chances.

The best scenario is when you are proficient and don’t need paper, except to offer your exhibits, and your opponent is bound to paper.  And if it’s a jury trial then you’re in the best of all worlds.  Why? Because jurors will pick up on the difference in the rhythm of how you operate (which is smooth and stress-free) and how your opponent operates.  Every time your opponent offers a document you always wave him off and say “I don’t need a copy. I’ve got it right here on my computer.”  By the end of the trial the jury will have had many chances to quietly think to themselves “why doesn’t that other lawyer use a computer?”

Even better is when you are able to display your documents on a large screen.  Obviously, to do this you’d have to have scanned your documents.  Since this was part of your routine from day one, it’s no big deal to hook your computer to a projector and blow up a key part of a document.  Your opponent would probably not want to start scanning his documents on the eve of trial.

Of course, you’ll have to get clearance from the judge to use a projector to display your documents.  And every judge has preferences about things like this, so you should find out how to address those preferences well before trial.  But, my experience is that, if the judge can trust that you won’t delay the trial, they’ll let you use display technology. The best way to get the judge to ‘buy in’ is to hire a firm that specializes in this sort of thing.  The way it usually works is that the trial display company charges a set fee per day to bring in display monitors for the judge and jury, and all counsel. If something goes wrong, they have backup systems and know how to fix those problems.

Doing exhibit display can be tricky and so, even if you feel really comfortable with technology, it’s usually a good idea to hire an expert that specializes in courtroom graphics.  They have special software, and they know how to use it. If they have to scan your documents they charge extra, but you’ve already done that so you usually only have to pay the daily fee. If your opponent wants to display their stuff too, then you can split the daily fee.  If they don’t want to pay then you look the tech-savvy wizard to the jury, and you have an edge.  If your oppenent does want to split the cost, odds are they’ll still  fumble around because they’re unfamiliar with handling digital information. In other words, either way: advantage to you.

Of course, the dream situation is where you have a small case and the judge is fine with you using a display projector and you (or your staff person) operates it while you refer to your exhibits. Meanwhile, your opponent is shlepping through paper and looking disorganized in comparison.  If they work for a big firm and have a large corporate client, even better.

At the end of the trial you take the boxes of paper that you didn’t use and shred them.  The exhibits that were introduced are already on your computer and are already tagged. Unplug your computer, pack it away and head home. No need to walk out of court like the sap at a carnival who won a lot of cheap crap and now has to lug it home.  You’re a lean, mean information-processing machine and the dinosaurs will never know what hit them.

Solo lawyers and those in small firms need to save time as well as money. And going to the bank to make a deposit is usually a time-consuming venture.  If your firm has money coming in steadily (and if it doesn’t you have a collection problem) then you naturally want to deposit it as quickly as possible.

Is there a better alternative to traipsing down to the bank and waiting in line?

Yes, there is.  Many banks offer the option of self-deposit using a scanner. The workflow is dead-simple and quite convenient.  Just scan the checks and they show up as a pending transaction right away.  Real Estate lawyers who do lots of closings would certainly benefit from this option.  However, any lawyers who make more than one visit per week to the bank would probably find digital depositing to be a major boon.

Now, here are the caveats: Not every bank offers this system, and you typically have to use a special scanner provided to you by the bank (none that I know of allow you to use the Fujitsu ScanSnap for example). This is a relatively new service so it’s hard to say exactly how it will work at your bank. The best thing to do is ask to see if the service is available and how much extra it might cost. In Louisiana the following banks are reported to offer this service: CapitalOne, Chase, Whitney, and Gulf Coast Bank & Trust. And for those who are military veterans there is the USAA which allows online bank deposits via an iPhone application.

Apple announced its highly-anticipated iPad device yesterday to largely mixed reviews. While much remains to be seen about the device, we at DigitalWorkflowCLE are most interested how it—and similar devices such as the HP Slate—will change lawyering. The prospect of making an oral argument from a slate device or examining a witness without a paper outline is intriguing. For insightful posts in this regard see Jeff Richardson’s thoughts over at iPhoneJD, and Ernie Svenson’s post at Ernie the Attorney.