As a business process, the ‘production of documents’ easily overshadows the typical processes under scrutiny at a law firm such as billing, conflicts or new matter opening. It affects all lawyers, clients and key financial ratios such as the leverage of secretaries. Despite the importance and prevalence of the document production process, it is not well understood and often unnecessarily inefficient.
Document production is not just a pool of typists, it also includes the effort expended each day by fee earners and secretaries to find, revise, review and share documents. Even the scope of a ‘document’ has blurred to include MS Office documents and e-mails in both electronic and printed forms.
