Given the new normal in workplaces, the need to have the important assets of an organization accessible even for remote workers has been greatly emphasized. It’s safe to say that the shift is somehow more manageable for companies that have welcomed digital transformation. But for firms that are still stuck with manually and physically handling files and documents — like in some government agencies, legal offices, and courts — it’s like they had to learn their lesson the hard way when everyone had no choice but to work away from the four walls of the office.

In a bid to raise awareness about adapting digitization, Attaché Docs recently premiered a webinar series dubbed “Transforming Courts and Legal Offices to Digital” to shed light about how the benefits of leveraging the virtual space outweigh all the apprehensions in taking that huge business decision of going digital.

Take legal offices as an example, where stacks of papers about cases mounted on desks and in cabinets remain a common sight. According to Allan Tan, the Managing Director of Monstarlab Manila (formerly Ideyatech), keeping physical documents imposes a challenge not just in terms of storage, but also in crucial areas of a work system, including workload distribution, and file and progress tracking.

“Sometimes, the documents are misplaced and it’s hard to track the process. It is really hard to keep track of physical hard copies lalo na kung dumarami ‘yung hina-handle niyong documents (especially when the documents are piling up),” Tan said in the first episode of the webinar series tackling document handling.

He added that when documents are digitized, they are safely and automatically stored in a centralized digital repository that can be accessed anytime and anywhere by employees, an ideal scenario given the remote and hybrid work setup currently implemented in most offices. This also lessens the instances of misplacing a document and losing important information that’s commonly encountered with physically handling and storing crucial papers.

Christopher Lee, Monstarlab Manila’s Program Manager, meanwhile, highlighted how legal document print-outs are also more prone to getting sensitive information exposed. 

“With Case Management System, you can increase the security and privacy of the personal data of all the people involved in a case,” he said, noting that some Asian countries, particularly Singapore, have since adapted digitization in their state courts system through a platform called e-Negotiation.1

In the Philippines, Monstarlab Manila has been at the forefront of guiding and encouraging businesses and organizations to go forth in their digital transformation journey with Attaché Docs, an easy-to-use case management system tool that converts manual paperwork to digital formats. Even without IT expertise, employees of legal offices can be familiarized with how Attaché Docs works in building customizable forms with automation and productivity tools, and with an intuitive and dynamic dashboard.

“Case Management Systems have dashboards where users can see graphical reports of most active cases, overdue cases, case aging filed by dates, nandoon lahat (everything is there),” Lee added.

Utilizing a case management system like Attaché Docs in legal offices also help ensure productivity and equal distribution of workloads across various departments, as what Tan mentioned in the second episode of the webinar series about voluminous case documents.

“Ang nagiging isang problema kapag patong-patong ‘yung kaso or sa sobrang dami ng kaso sa legal offices or sa korte, hindi ka na nagiging productive sa iba mong tasks. (One of the problems to address when the cases pile up is that since there’s a lot of cases to attend to in legal offices and courts, employees may not be that productive when it comes to their other tasks.) Imagine one division handling thousands of records, it gets very difficult to monitor,” Tan said.

He furthered that the manual process of profiling, tagging, and organizing legal documents takes away the time that can be used instead in other productive tasks. When workloads and documents pile up and employees have to sort them manually, the chances of having human errors also increases especially in creating reports.

“All of these can be solved through automation. This is why it is very important to have a system that can manage all the physical documents which can be accessible all the time,” Tan said.

Watch Episode 1 and 2 here:

Let Attaché Docs be the solution you’ve been waiting for to ignite digital transformation in your workplace. Discover more about this digitization software by scheduling a free demo with the Monstarlab Manila team.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel of Attache Docs and stay tuned for the next episodes of the ‘Transforming Courts and Legal Offices to Digital’ webinar series.

1New S’pore court dedicated to harassment cases to be established on June 1