Creating electronic binders for Briefs to Counsel or Transaction Bibles and Summaries are commonplace at this Australian law firm. However, it had been a very labour-intensive process according to its IT Trainer, with “staff creating links to documents on their network and manually adding them to a Word document one-by-one.”

This work is done mostly by the Word Processing teams and paralegals in the various departments but has been done by lawyers on occasion.

“It is always concerning to see people spend so much time (up to four hours per electronic Brief) on something that could be done much quicker with the right technology,” he said.

“But it was a process that everyone was familiar with, and it can be difficult to get people to change and try something new.”

The IT Trainer explained that it was eventually newer members of the firm’s staff who “picked up that people had been spending hours doing manual linking in Word when there is software available that can do the entire process much quicker.”

In fact, it wasn’t until a new legal assistant from a smaller firm in Queensland was tasked with creating an electronic Brief that they started to question the process and to look for an alternative solution.

“The legal assistant was surprised to learn that our firm didn’t use pdfDocs Binder, which she had used at her previous firm. She said, ‘This is supposed to be a big law firm. I’ve come from a small law firm, and we did this in minutes.”

The solution – automate the process of binding documents

The firm decided to contact DocsCorp to get a trial version of pdfDocs Binder.

“We ran a pilot out of our Brisbane office, which was very successful, and so we purchased the software and expanded it out to the people who needed it,” explained the IT Trainer.

The success of the trial mostly came down to the feedback from “those who had spent hours repetitively linking documents and who could immediately see the benefit."

pdfDocs Binder eliminated much of this manual work by automating the process of converting and ‘binding’ vast amounts of documents, emails, and attachments together.

The firm’s staff simply add the documents to the pdfDocs Binder interface, arranging the documents with drag and drop ease. They can even add folders and subfolders to establish a document hierarchy and structure. In addition, the PDF binder can be branded with the firm’s logo as well as local office addresses and other information.

Measuring the ROI of pdfDocs Binder

The IT Trainer was able to calculate that pdfDocs Binder could reduce production costs and time by up to 75%. “More importantly, the turnaround time to provide transaction bibles to clients in our Corporate and Banking areas (who are very time-sensitive) has been cut, and our clients noticed this.”

The IT Trainer also noted that “in addition to the improved ROI from pdfDocs Binder, it boosted staff morale.”

For example, graduates no longer had to spend countless hours doing mundane, repetitive work.

“Instead, they and their colleagues tasked with creating Briefs were able to get back to work while the electronic binder was being generated, which depending on the number of documents in the Brief, could be as much as 1.5 hours. They were able to put those five years of study to better use.”

Graduates rotating through the different departments became pdfDocs Binder champions, requesting it for other departments whenever they had to create electronic briefs.

In Summary

This leading Australian law firm regularly creates electronic Briefs and Transaction Bibles for its Corporate and Banking clients. This has always been a manual process at the firm until a new employee introduced them to pdfDocs Binder. The firm adopted the solution, automating the process and reducing production costs by as much as 75%. Its corporate clients appreciated the speedy service and the easy to view and navigate electronic Briefs.