Scanning and Archiving Solution for a Legal Firm
Solution: Scanning and Archiving | Industry: Legal | Software: Optiflow | Hardware: Multifunction Device
The Challenge
Document organisation of scanned files is key to Legal Firms. When reviewing cases it is sometimes necessary to be aware of the order in which the pages are viewed. Far too often, it is necessary for a legal professional to amend these files manually, adding page numbers in by hand, one page at a time.
To reduce the amount of time which our customer needed to alter the files, PLR Legal began working on a way to automatically add page’s numbers to a scanned document. This needed to easy to use for the operators, flexible whilst providing a time-saving solution.
The PLR Legal Solution
Using the most capable software for this task, OptiFlow, we created a process which let us set the length and format of the input string for a case file. This can be done on a character by character basis, an alphabetic character using %, a numeric character using a ‘#’ or any character using a ‘?’ which would decrease errors.
This case number is remembered for next scan, or can be cleared quickly with the CLEAR button. The settings were then set to default duplex and delete/skip blank pages. We then set up bates numbering, set the position of the page number, the number of characters, as well as anything else the customer needed. Additionally, the software was set to automatically tidy up the image, deskew the pages, despeckle, etc.
OptiFlow converts the image to PDF/A (searchable). – PDF/A is a subset of PDF that eliminates certain risks threatening the one-to-one future reproducibility of the content. PDF/A forbids dynamic content to ensure that the user sees the exact same content both today and for years to come. Everything that is required to render the document the exact same way, every time, is contained in the PDF/A file: fonts, colour profiles, images etc. PDF/A is also an ISO standard, guaranteeing that future software generations will know how to open and render PDF/A files.
Integration with Proclaim was also possible, we could implement barcoding, which would then place a small barcode along the very bottom of the documents the customer sent out to clients. When they got them back, they would simply stick a large stack of returned documents into the MFD’s Automated Document Feeder (ADF) and press goes, because the case number is in the barcode, they are just sent straight to the case. Barcodes can also be used to do document separation.
Results and Benefits
The searchable PDF in archive format is then filed away, named the way we want, into the case.