Legal Document Management

OCR has many applications in the legal profession, aiding in the transition from paper to digital documents. Recent technology has allowed law offices to reduce bulky paperwork, and simplify storage and processing. When legal papers are transferred from hard copy to digital format, it is useful to incorporate capabilities that come with standard text files, such as searching, analyzing, and editing text. However, when a document is scanned, the computer sees it only as an image file, and is incapable of identifying individual words. OCR recognizes the individual characters in lengthy documents, simplifying legal document management by enabling a variety of manipulations.

One important capability resulting from OCR is the ability to search instantly through hundreds of pages for a specific word or phrase. This saves the significant time and effort required to search through hard copies of documents or to search manually through a non-OCRed PDF file. OCRing a single PDF can save hours of labor when working with that file in the future. As a result, court documents, legal briefs, discovery documents and depositions become more accessible and easier to work with. The ability to identify individual characters allows legal professionals to edit text electronically, treating it as a text file rather than an image.

Working in such an electronic format facilitates better communication and information transmission. Individuals involved in different steps of the legal process are able to work together more efficiently, without losing valuable time and information between steps. It can be especially useful for managing archives, which contain large volumes of paper documents that must be ready to be retrieved as needed. OCR provides an automated solution for archive management, with minimal human labor involved in the transfer of data from paper to digital files. Once transferred and processed, these files are readily accessible, and can used in preparation of court documents. OCR eases the transition to digital files from paper, which remains prevalent in the legal system. This technology can be a worthwhile acquisition for legal firms and organizations dealing with large volumes of paper or scanned documents.