Description of WORLDOX Imaging Solution at
Abbey Adams Law Firm

Case Study

Abbey, Adams, Byelick, Kiernan, Mueller & Lancaster, L.L.P. is a law firm headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida.  David Abbey, a Partner at the firm, started an electronic files program in his department in November 2003, before they had implemented WORLDOX.  When the firm then bought WORLDOX in June 2004, the effectiveness of the scanning solution increased dramatically.  According to Mr. Abbey, “Being able to uniformly profile and locate documents in WORLDOX was a great leap forward.”  Then in September 2005, the entire firm started scanning all incoming and outgoing mail, as well as client and case documents.  Faxes are also scanned and e-mailed to recipients, but only if the fax contains high-priority information. 

Abbey Adams’ paperless scanning solution supports their new policy on paper documents which requires that they scan all incoming and signed outgoing mail as well as all case-related documents.  They keep the paper documents for 30 days, then after that they shred all documents unless retention of them is required by the courts.  As for legacy documents, the firm had a backlog of about 7000 boxes.  At first, the firm decided not to scan these documents since it was cost-prohibitive to do so, but they have recently begun to scan this legacy backlog into the system. 

To help create its WORLDOX/Scanning integrated solution, Abbey Adams enlisted the help of WORLDOX Systems Integrator InTouch Legal.  Jon Lord, the firm’s I.T. Director worked with InTouch to get the system up and running.  The solution consisted of approximately 25 local desktop scanners located at staff workstations, where documents could be scanned and profiled into WORLDOX right at the scanning person’s desk.  Additionally, the firm placed two high-volume scanners – one for each division of the firm.  Scan jobs of fewer than 30 documents are executed at the user’s workstation, while jobs of 30+ pages are sent to the central scanners where specific personnel is dedicated to the scanning task.  Both the local scanners and central high-volume scanners came outfitted with Canon Capture Perfect software, version 3.  The hook between WORLDOX and Capture Perfect was purchased from Flat Rock Office Operating System, Inc., a technology spin-off of James Hoyer law firm, which is also a WORLDOX customer. 

 The Scan-to-WORLDOX procedure is as follows:

1. From Capture Perfect on their workstations, users click on the “Scan to Batch” button and a WORLDOX profile screen pops up. 
2. The user profiles the document into WORLDOX.  Then, when the user clicks “OK” on the profile, the document is then scanned, OCR’d and then stored in WORLDOX. 
3. The user gets a dialog box which then asks them if they want to add more pages or not.
4. The documents are scanned into a PDF + text file at 200 dpi. 

According to Lord, “The beauty of this system is that it is incredibly streamlined.  Users don’t have to scan the document into a network folder, and then profile/move it into WORLDOX.  Everything happens in one single click.”

Lord said that the setup of the scanners and workstations was not overly time-consuming and the training time was relatively minimal. He says, “We have had other firms visiting our site to see how we have set up this system. It’s much easier to use than other systems.”

David Abbey explains that the level of “buy-in” to the system has increased exponentially since it was first implemented.  Abbey elaborates, “At first, our people were resistant to scanning and profiling into WORLDOX.  After 90 days, they began to realize the benefits.  Now that six months have gone by, people are seeing that the system is really valuable.  Since half the documents they need to refer to are from the past six months, our users are really seeing the advantages of the WORLDOX/Imaging solution.  Five years from now, we’re not going to know how we ever did it another way.”

Mr. Abbey lists the benefits of Abbey Adams’ digital system as follows:

-         Employee “Buy-in” – Everyone buys into the digital system.  Individualize scanning and processing of documents means that you can cultivate participation and build expertise among employees.

-         Development of a Knowledge Base – When more information is added into the system, the system becomes increasingly valuable.

-         Efficiency – Makes for a better workflow and process.  Scanning and profiling does take extra time, but on the other side, all the “hunting and fetching” for documents is eliminated.  Attorneys can simply pull up files on their computer screens without needing the paper document at all.

 The firm is currently surveying its employees about the system so they can improve it.  David Abbey said that the firm’s proactive attitude toward technology has made it a highly desirable place to work.  “People want to work for Abbey Adams because we have a reputation for constantly moving forward.  Technological advances like our Scan-to-WORLDOX System play an important role in continuing that momentum.”