Managing and filing court documents is a productivity killer. It’s an essential part of fighting for your clients and winning their cases, but it’s still a time sink that takes the paralegals and legal assistants in your back office, pulls them away from other essential tasks, and eats up hours upon hours of time that you can’t bill back to the client.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can organize your legal files, file court documents, and fulfill all your necessary legal obligations and still have plenty of time left on the clock to go above and beyond for your clients—without racking up overtime or burning out your staff!

Let your back office spend more time with their families, get some shut-eye, and tackle your cases bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with tips on efficient legal document management from the experts at MyFileRunner.

How to Organize Legal Files in the 21st Century Law Firm

Productivity in any office space rests on a firm bedrock of organization. And with all the documents legal proceedings generate, that’s especially true for legal firms. The digital age hasn’t reduced the sheer volume of legal files—it’s just turned much of it from ink and paper into ones and zeroes. Today, ensuring better file management for your legal assistants is all about the digital tools they have to organize and keep track of critical documents

1. Sort Your Find Client

This might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s a foundational step in your legal document management practices. The advantage of computers is that this doesn’t take towering rows of file cabinets anymore—or, at least, not as many. Make subfolders in each case folder for different document types (e.g., pleadings, correspondence, evidence) for easy navigation.

2. Standardize Your File Naming Conventions

You know how many individual documents a single case can produce—enough that even with all your files organized into folders and subfolders by case, client, and document type, it can be hard to find what you need if your file names aren’t clear or descriptive enough.

To spend less time hunting for the right file, set a standard in your back office for naming digital files, incorporating the client name, case number, document type, and date. When you need to sort by chronological order or other criteria, consistent file names mean a lot less time spent fumbling in the dark.

3. Use Metadata for Search Efficiency

With today’s legal document management software, you have more than just the filename to tell you about a document’s contents. You also have metadata you can “tag” your documents with that includes case numbers, parties involved, or filing dates. Your document management software platform can search metadata to pull up relevant files much faster than you can.

4. Enable Document Versioning

There are times when you’ll want to revisit an earlier version of a document before you made revisions to it—which can be a frustrating and time-consuming challenge for legal assistants. Not when your document management software automatically tracks revisions! Enabling document versioning makes it easy to keep track of edits and revisions while preserving your access to the most up-to-date info.

5. Train Your Staff on File Management

Using document management software is like riding a bike—you have to learn how to do it! Legal document management software platforms have powerful features to cut down the time your back office spends pushing papers, but it takes regular training to ensure your administrative staff knows how to use these features to their full potential—while still ensuring compliance.

6. Audit Your Document Management Practices

Nothing stays the same forever, and that includes the way your firm has to organize its legal files. As your firm grows, your clientele changes, and technology evolves, the most efficient way you did things last year might not be the most efficient way to do them this year or next year.

With regular audits of your document management workflows, you can spot bottlenecks, see where your processes are still inefficient, and figure out where to make adjustments or introduce new legal document management tools to streamline your processes and improve your productivity.

7. Embrace eFiling Solutions

One of the biggest time sinks in the back office is document filing. Having your files organized is one thing—but getting critical court documents filled out without errors and filed with the county clerk on time is another long, time-consuming process. And as much as embracing legal document management platforms can help, it’s not enough on its own to stop filing from eating up hours of your legal assistants’ time—even if you’re submitting digital files online instead of running papers to the courthouse.

What if your back office team didn’t have to spend hours painstakingly going through documents to catch manual errors? What if they didn’t have to spend hours on the phone with the county clerk when an error does slip through? What if they didn’t have to rush against tight deadlines?

That’s where MyFileRunner comes in. With two decades of experience perfecting the art of electronic document filing across California, Texas, and Illinois, we take the hassle out of filing documents so you can focus on winning your case. You can use our platform to submit your documents directly to your county clerk—or hand it all over to us and let us handle all the work with our new File4Me service.

From solo practitioners to large firms, we’re available 24/7/365 to take eFiling off your mind and make your firm healthier, more productive, and more successful. Register today and start eFiling ASAP!