Whitepaper
If your firm is engaged in digital transformation, you’ll have discovered that not everything can be scanned and destroyed. For most firms there’s generally a cache of irreplaceable original documents that must be kept and safeguarded in perpetuity. But how do you look after them in an efficient way? In this article, Chris Giles explains how advances in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can offer a highly effective, time saving way to keep track of vital pieces of paper.
We know this would never happen at your firm, but apparently there are some law firms that tell their professional indemnity/malpractice insurance providers that yes, they do regularly check on all the high value documents held by the firm. They just don’t volunteer that the last inventory was done eight years ago.
But to be clear, this isn’t because there’s a lack of will within firms to maintain control of important original documents. It’s just that they lack a way to take a proper inventory that isn’t highly labor intensive. And this is a growing problem as information governance practice increasingly focuses on electronic data to the detriment of physical documents.
Wet signature documents
The issue is that there are simply some original documents that the firm must keep. These are very often “wet signature” and encompass real estate deeds, wills and documents relating to trust funds, patents, copyright and trademark, as well as certain types of insurance policy. There’s no knowing when they may need to be produced to show a court or client, or when documents might have to be located to satisfy matter mobility requirements.
Wills need to be kept and brought out whenever the client wants to make an amendment, and later when their executors show up. And in the US, original property deeds are particularly vital – some of which are extremely old, and some of which pertain to extremely valuable real estate. These need to be produced whenever there’s a sale or dispute. If a firm can’t find the deeds to a 30,000-acre ranch when the first owner’s great grandson wants to transfer ownership, the firm can be in a lot of trouble.
It’s also the case that many firms are custodians of material that’s of considerable historic value. For example, records of a landmark trial, or of the first patent for what becomes a breakthrough technology. This is prestigious for law firms and it’s money in the vault – until you lose or misplace the documents.
Because it’s a fact that when firms do perform inventories of these critical original documents, which are typically kept in safes or fire suppression vaults, sometimes documents can’t be found. This can be the result of human error in the filing process, the inventory process, or because an individual has “borrowed” a document and not returned it. Whatever the cause, the impact can be catastrophic. There’s no way to recreate these documents. They can’t be reconstructed by going back through your electronic files. And think of the disruption as offices are turned upside down to relocate them, followed by the consequences if they’re really lost. Firms can face malpractice suits and serious reputational hits.
Thankfully, there’s a reliable, cost-effective way to conduct inventories using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that gives firms far greater control of these vital documents.
Marathon running and dog tagging
At LegalRM we know about original document management because one of our clients has a fire suppression vault holding around 40,000 folders some of which contain up to 1,000 individual documents. The job of manually taking inventory in this vault was taking this firm around three months (for a full-time staff member), on each occasion. Now that the firm has introduced RFID technology and our supporting software, the entire inventory can comfortably be concluded in less than an hour!
You’re probably already more familiar with RFID than you realize. It’s a form of wireless communication that’s actually existed since the 1940s. RFID tags are miniscule chips containing a unique identifier that can be read remotely and store information. RFID readers use radio waves to transmit signals that activate the tags to send a radio wave back that’s translated into data. There’s a wide range of uses for RFID from tracking pets and livestock and supply chain logistics to tagging marathon runners and triathletes so their times can be accurately recorded. RFID is also very widely used in inventory management.
You might also recall that a while back there was some interest in using RFID technology in law firms. Indeed, LegalRM worked with firms, around 15 years ago, on the feasibility of installing RFID systems. But at that time tags and readers were expensive and readers were static. It meant there were significant infrastructure costs to putting fixed readers into all the doorways of dispersed depositories. Plus, those systems could only yield fairly limited information. They could tell you a document had gone past a given reader. But beyond that they gave no further help in locating a missing article. The high costs of installation, plus the low utility of the solution, meant that back then it just didn’t make sense for firms to invest in RFID.
How to conduct an RFID inventory
The good news is that RFID technology has moved on considerably since then. Today’s pre-programmed RFID tags cost around 20 cents (17 pence) each and handheld readers cost about USD$1,100. That’s all the hardware you need to get started.
It’s then a question of doing inventories as before, but this time attaching RFID tags to all the necessary folders, then scanning the barcode and RFID tag. The barcode data is pulled through and sent by Bluetooth to whichever device you select: be that your smart phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Then the software on your device– will register each article. So now you have a complete RFID inventory.
The next time the firm wants or needs to conduct an audit, it’s a question of opening the software and then using the reader in the proximity of the RFID tags. Note that unlike barcodes, the reader doesn’t need a line of sight. In fact, the system we use will work at a range of up to 30 meters and happily through glass and wood (but it doesn’t do so well with metal.)1
You walk through the vault pointing the handheld reader at every shelf. The reader wakes up each tag, collects its data and sends it to the software. Each tag can be read in less than 100th of a millisecond.2 In our experience the software then processes the data and applies logic that validates it and identifies anomalies between the previous inventory and the current one, thereby highlighting what’s no longer there (and also conversely what’s been added). These will either be documents that individuals have logged out (which you know about); or they will be documents that have “walked”.
Thereafter, the firm will typically make an educated guess, (based on historic audit trails or movement of records) as to where missing documents may have “walked” to. It’s at this point that you take the handheld reader to the indicated location – it could be a particular special project “war room”, or department, or building, or a specific partner’s office.
Once you switch the reader on in this location it will help you locate the missing article. And it’s not necessary to disturb piles of paper on a desk or on the floor or in a filing cabinet to do so. Your investigations can be totally unobtrusive, with the reader set to display an ascending number of “bars” as it gets closer to the missing article. Or you can set the reader to emit a high-pitched chirp (similar to a metal detector), that will get increasingly more insistent as the reader gets closer to its target. This is the less subtle route, but it’s possibly more satisfying, especially if you’re in the presence of the firm’s least organized partner who has just sworn they absolutely don’t have the document you’ve just found in their office …
But levity aside, this technology is high functioning, and the cost is modest. There’s no thought that it will replace barcode technology already deployed by many firms, but instead, it’s a complementary system that does a discrete job very effectively for a targeted subset of high-value original documents. Because handheld RFID readers don’t need to “see” RFID tags and are extremely quick, you can conduct very reliable and efficient audits. To reiterate, a firm we worked with reduced inventory time from three months to not much more than 30 minutes. As part of the firm’s information governance armory this is an ideal solution for keeping track of critical documents that the firm cannot afford to have go astray.
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