Scanners

Scanners are probably the most common and useful part of any paperless office. The idea, of course, is that you will take any of the paperwork you get in the mail and scan it into a PDF on the computer. You could also scan in opposing parties' pleadings and other litigation materials. The advantages of this approach are several- first, there isn't as much paper hanging around the office, and second, new advances in searchable PDF technology make it easy to search the contents of any documents scanned in, and potentially make it a lot easier to find anything in a large quantity of papers.

The only real disadvantage of this method is the time investment involved. Scanners of course are a lot faster than they used to be, but it still takes an ongoing time commitment on the part of either you or your staff. I would recommend a scanner to any lawyer, if for no other reason than because it is so easy to send documents back and forth via email (and increasingly courts are accepting or even requiring submissions via the Internet).