Salter, Feiber, Murphy, Hutson & Menet, P.A. Case Study

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Business Overview

Salter, Feiber, Murphy, Hutson & Menet, P.A. is a law firm located in Gainesville, Florida. Founded in 1974 by James D. Salter and James G. Feiber, Jr., the firm concentrates on real estate law, business and corporate law, commercial litigation, contract law, negligence, personal injury, wrongful death, and workers' compensation.

The firm places a high value on personal service and professional ethics and throughout the years has built strong relationships with its clients. Their repeat business and referrals have led to strong and continuous growth.

Document Challenges
Like most law firms, Salter Feiber deals with vast amounts of documents, a significant portion of which needs to be kept for long periods of time. “We tried to keep the files closed during the last 12 months onsite,” says Kim Chewning, Firm Administrator. “Everything else was sent to a third party for storage in a secure facility.”

However, as the archive grew, so did the storage cost. Files closed within the last five to eight years were frequently required for reference, so Salter Feiber found that they had to send runners to retrieve files from the archive facility several times a week. This, too, was a considerable expense. A bigger problem was that attorneys regularly had to wait for information which was significantly impacting client response times. David E. Menet, partner at Salter Feiber says “Client service is our number one core value, and we are not about to jeopardize it. With today’s technology, we knew there had to be a better way to manage our documents.”

Selecting a solution

Kim Chewning headed up the team that was assigned to recommend a solution. Using the Internet, they researched a range of products and ended up with a short list of five possible solutions. The goals were straightforward:

1. Improve client response times.
2. Improve accessibility of closed case files for all firm personnel.
3. Completely eliminate external storage.
4. Seamless incorporation of active case load to achieve paperless environment in the future.

After extensive evaluation, the team selected Computhink’s ViewWise. The primary reasons were:

• User Interface (UI): The combination of the easy-to-use folder-based Navigator and the powerful index and content searches is ideal for users of all levels.
• Flexibility of indexing: The ability to quickly create custom index fields and document types based on the way the users typically searched for documents. ViewWise was able to accommodate this perfectly.
• Ease of output to print, e-mail etc. This is the most common reason to retrieve documents from closed files.

“ViewWise offered superior featuring for an extremely competitive price,” Chewning added. The firm’s partners unanimously approved the team’s recommendation for ViewWise.

Implementation

“We put a lot of thought into the planning of the folder structure and document types,” said Chewning. “The Computhink team was very patient during this process. They listened carefully, asked intelligent, challenging questions of our work processes and proposed plan, and offered valuable insight and suggestions. Their ability to quickly grasp our unique vision for the use of their product ultimately led to a flawless implementation of ViewWise.”

Looking back, Chewning is very pleased with the way ViewWise was deployed: “From day one, user acceptance has been great. A key consideration was that we wanted to make sure that the less computer savvy users would not feel lost in the transition. We therefore set up the folder Navigator to mimic the filing structure in our file room. This worked very well and within a week or two, many people were comfortably using the advanced searching capabilities of ViewWise.”

The firm hired part-time personnel to scan and index all files closed going forward from implementation. Additionally, this staff was charged with scanning the backlog of over 2,500 files that had been closed and stored onsite during the previous year. Fourteen months after implementation, 22 file cabinets that previously held closed files had been emptied, all newly closed files were being scanned and indexed in a timely manner and, on a regular basis, files were being removed from storage and scanned, thus continuing to reduce the monthly storage cost. Now these files are instantly accessible by all attorneys, paralegals and administrative staff.

The Bottom Line

After the implementation of ViewWise, Salter, Feiber, Murphy, Hutson & Menet, P.A. was able to immediately reverse the steep climb of external storage charges. Files are scanned immediately after being closed and older files are being permanently removed from storage to be scanned, further reducing and eventually eliminating all storage charges. These savings alone will easily pay for the investment the firm made in just a few years. “More valuable to the firm, however, is the immediate accessibility of these files. In terms of client service, it is impossible to quantify this benefit,” Chewning states.

David Menet: “Quite frankly, we consider it the cost of doing business. Document management in the 21st century is as necessary as Internet and telephones. The real return on our investment in the Computhink solution is the improved service we are now providing our customers. And that is truly priceless.”

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