Becoming a Greener Law Practice

February 2011

Why Paperless?

Anderson Law & Escrow, PLLC opened its office on January 1, 2011, with the mindset of continuing to offer the highest quality of business and commercial escrow services while at the same time making vast attempts to be considered an environmentally conscious law practice. In the past, you and your client received a Closing Notebook from us, tabbed and indexed for your convenience. In our attempts to be a green law practice, we now scan all of the final closing documents into a PDF file format, sending all parties a CD of the final closing documents, which is also tabbed and indexed, along with their important original documents. This saves on the cost of paper, printing, faxing, mailing and storing for all parties involved. With the old system, reams of paper were used for each closing transaction and then the files were stored in an offsite storage facility for a minimum of seven years until the files would be destroyed.

We felt it was time for a change to help our environment.

Paperless Facts

According to the data source: US Environmental Protection Agency

• Printing 10,000,000 pages is the equivalent of:
  • Ø 2,500 trees
  • Ø 56,000 gallons of oil
  • Ø 450 cubic yards of landfill space
  • Ø 595,000 KW of energy

Doing the Math

For each closing transaction approximately 1,500 sheets of paper were used for correspondence, general copies, accounting, drafts, finals, and closing document copies. Therefore 10,000,000 pages of printing would be used every 7,000 closing transactions. This means one tree was consumed approximately every 3 closings.

How is this Helpful?

Last week, we were approached by an old escrow client, whose business had burned along with all of his closing documents. Under the old system, assuming the closing was less than seven years old and the documents had not been destroyed, his file would have been located in an off-site storage facility, then copied, mailed and returned to the facility, all at considerable time and cost. Under the new system, a new CD could either be burned then mailed or the documents could be emailed promptly.

Join Us

Although this environmentally conscious transition should be seamless and unnoticeable to you and future clients, we hope you will find this approach acceptable, and join us in this venture to make record keeping environmentally friendly. This new method allows for easy storage, retrieval and replacement of documents. For those of you who have tried our new system in January, we would welcome your input and feedback. We look forward to working with you on future closings this year.

For more information about this transition, please call or email us today!