In this digital age, it is surprising to find that many industries maintain paper-based filing systems and operations, but indeed they do exist. The legal industry is one of them, and recent findings from DocSolid show that a vast majority of firms rely on paper records for their official matter file.

A company that supplies enterprise document scanning solutions for the legal market, DocSolid recently completed a roadshow across 26 cities in the U.S. and Canada with over 197 law firms attending. The firms spanned size and location, yet 84 percent of them were found to rely on paper records, and 13 percent noted that their firms have no official matter file policy at all.

DocSolid asked one question of the 197 law firms that participated in its ILTA Roadshow: “At your firm, what is the official matter file?” 16 percent said “the document management system,” 21 percent said “the paper file,” 50 percent said both, and 13 percent said they don't have an official matter file. What do these numbers show? A stark lag in digitization — notably in an area that should be a priority for law firms.