Clark County courthouse gets rid of paper documents

Monday, July 21, 2014

The courthouse in Clark County, Washington will soon be going paperless as County Clerk Scott Weber realizes his vision of a courtroom that operates on technology and information flow rather than an antiquated system of paper documents, reported The Columbian. 

Weber has been espousing the ideals of a paperless courthouse since he took over the Clark County Clerk's Office. He has worked to ensure that documents are immediately scanned into the court's content management service, where they can be easily accessed. 

While criminal files are still stored physically Weber hopes that they will soon go the way of family and civil court documents and end up on a document storage solution rather than in a filing cabinet. 

In addition to judges, some attorneys use the system to file documents. The court's new content document management software provides attorneys with the ability to file documents directly from their office, rather than at the courthouse. 

The courthouse has recovered the cost of implementing it's document management software through a subscription cost paid by attorneys in order to utilize the system. 

Going paperless comes with a plethora of benefits that are realized by governments, offices and schools both immediately and over the long-term. Advantages include more storage space, cost-savings, and more time for important work, according to the Houston Chronicle. 

Eliminating paper from the office, courtroom or classroom, also allows for work to be completed remotely and on flexible schedules. No longer is it necessary to be physically present anywhere, since the documents needed can be accessed from everywhere. 

The Clark County courthouse has quickly taken advantage of those benefits. Clerks batch scan about 8,000 paper documents into the system per day, according to The Columbian. And attorneys don't even need to take a trip to access them. 

"It's convenient," criminal defense attorney Matthew Hoff told the newspaper. "It saves me time from having to schlep to the courthouse."

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