It’s no secret that those in the legal industry work with a vast number of printed documents each day. A survey by the Washington, D.C., firm of Arnold & Porter found that a typical lawyer uses 20,000 to 100,000 sheets of copy paper a year. Paper files tend to lend themselves well to formalizing filings, motions, agreements, and official transcripts. In fact, many government offices and courtrooms require certain documents to be printed and signed to be legally binding. Within this paper-intensive, document-heavy environment, a sizable portion of budgets go towards printing and copying various files every year.
As a firm grows more successful and handles more clients, the cost of printing and copying all of the necessary paperwork will only increase along with the potential for maintenance issues and wasted materials. Making sure that your legal office has complete control over its printing and copying devices can offer a number of benefits including eliminating the above issues and increasing overall productivity. Let’s take a closer look at all of the potential benefits of managed print services for law firms and the legal industry.
7 Benefits of Managed Print Services for Law Firms
1. Reduces Printing Costs
One of the most obvious benefits of managed print services for law firms is the ability to improve the efficiency of your devices, therefore decreasing waste and associated costs. Recent advancements in multifunction devices have allowed for more prints and copies to be made while using fewer resources, thus lowering the cost to operate the device. Additionally, when you work with a company offering managed print services, you can keep your devices up to date while combining all of your costs into a single monthly bill. Legal firms can then take advantage of this streamlined billing process to better track expenses and stay within budget.
2. Eliminates Unnecessary Prints
In addition to reducing unnecessary resource costs, a managed print services partner can help you track all of your print jobs with print management software to gain further insight into what is being printed, how often it’s being printed, and which computer it is coming from. By utilizing this service, you can eliminate wasteful prints and even put additional controls in place such as device print limits, user permissions, color restrictions, and more. With greater control over your print environment, you can cut out waste from your daily activities, saving additional time, money, and materials.
3. Automatic Supplies Replenishment
Law firms are often pressed for time due to strict deadlines and time-sensitive court cases. The last thing your team needs is for your devices to run out of printing supplies like ink and toner in the middle of copying vital documents or printing paperwork that must be signed as soon as possible. Utilizing managed print services can help you avoid these untimely problems as your devices are monitored by your MPS provider. We keep track of device utilization supply levels and automatically deliver new toner and other necessary consumables before its time to replace them in your device(s). That way you can spend more time on the tasks at hand and less time worrying about ordering supplies or tracking down emergency supplies.
4. Increases Regulatory Compliance
The security of the crucial information in your care is one of the most important aspects of a legal office. At any given time, there could be sensitive financial details, evidence, insurance information, and other confidential information that must be printed or copied. If any of this information is breached, there can be serious legal consequences and significant fines involved. Working with a managed print services partner that can assist you with securing these documents and requiring authentication before a file is printed is key to maintaining regulatory compliance. This can be done by holding print jobs in a queue until an employee swipes a card or enters a PIN to claim ownership of the document.
5. Easily Scalable
As your law practice gains more and more clients and begins to see an increasing amount of success, there will undoubtedly be more documents that must be printed and copied. To prevent any slowdowns, you need a fleet of devices and supplies that can grow with you to better serve the requirements of your team. A managed print services partner can provide you with everything you need to keep up with the demands of the job including increasing the frequency of supplies deliveries and increasing the number of multifunction devices in your workspace at any given time.
6. Supports Sustainability Initiatives
Many law firms are looking for ways to transition into more sustainable practices by cutting back on waste all around the office. What they may not consider is updating their printers and copiers to newer, improved models that are more energy efficient and with lower costs to operate. Additionally, managed print services allow you to keep track of what is being printed so that you can cut out excessive materials usage, as previously mentioned. All of this combined will allow your firm to reach its goals of becoming more sustainable and help to work towards an environmentally friendly future for everyone.
7. Access to Legal Workflow Apps
Practically every task that takes place in the legal industry utilizes paper. From deeds and contracts, to wills, leases, agreements, and litigations – the list of paper files that are necessary for the success of any task in this document intensive industry is endless. Through a partnership with a managed print services provider, you can get access to legal workflow apps for your multifunction printers that can help with tasks such as document management, expense tracking, eSignatures, and redacting sensitive and personally identifiable information (PII) from documents automatically.
