Anyone who has visited my office over the last few years cannot fail to have noticed the table next to my desk on which there are piles and piles of case files.
Lawyers are notorious for having large piles of paper files in their offices. These will be a combination of current case files and files where the cases have concluded, but the papers have not yet been archived. Although it adds a certain Dickensian charm to a law firm to sit in an office surrounded by lots of papers, it doesn’t tend to give a modern law firm the slick efficient image that it often wants to project. I was once a partner in a law firm where we purchased the adjoining property and turned it into a reception and interview suite full of meeting rooms so that we did not have to expose our clients to the shame of our untidy offices.
Armstrong Family Law is a niche “boutique” law firm and I don’t have enough room to do that. Therefore, conscious of how the paper is slowly taking up more and more of the limited space available, this January I resolved to move towards being paperless, or at least, “paperlite”. Perhaps inevitably, after months of beavering away at this, I found that I had more paper in my office than before I started.
Once of the first things that I did was did was to archive as many “dead” files as possible. Solicitors have to keep their files for at least 6 years in order to comply with the requirements of the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct and as I have been wary of relying purely on purely electronic records, this means that I have a secure storage facility where the files are archived. I therefore had to move large numbers of files down to the storage unit. Unfortunately, the storage unit was more or less full. However, Armstrong Family Law is now eight years old, so there were a large number of files there that I am now allowed to destroy as they are over six years old.
My problem was that I then had to bring the files earmarked for destruction back to my office so that I could then put them in the confidential waste for destruction. Therefore, for a while, it seemed to be two steps forward, three steps backwards with my new policy. But I am slowly getting there.
It may sound strange that solicitors don’t store files forever, but there are good reasons to not do so. Quite aside from the cost of storing files for years and years, the General Data Protection Regulation obliges us to keep records only for as long as we need them. Therefore, after 6 years, most files held by family lawyers would be destroyed. That is why it may be a good idea to make sure that you keep the copies of any papers and correspondence that your solicitor sends you during your divorce as Dale Vince found out when his ex-wife made a financial claim against him a few years ago, despite separating in 1984 and divorcing in 1992.
The only document that Mr Vince’ solicitors could locate from his divorce was the Decree Absolute; apart from this, there was not a single piece of paper from his divorce still in existence. I am sure that his solicitors would have loved to have been able to produce a sealed clean break order from long ago, showing that Mr Vince’s wife could no longer make a financial claim, but one did not exist and as far as anyone could recall, none had ever been made, (although I am not sure that anyone was entirely sure that was the case).
Paperless justice is coming. The new online divorce system slowly being introduced is just the start of it. However, being truly paperless is some way off. There are still too many things that we need to do using physical documents, so for now I am aiming to be “paperlite”, if not paperless.
In the meantime, another step that I need to take is to resist the temptation to click “print” every time I receive an email or document just so that I have a paper copy on the file. The email will be uploaded to my document management system only. It is tempting to think that it is easier to quickly riffle through a file, insert a thumb and then flip back and forth between relevant pages of the case file; but I am hoping that I can fully embrace paperlessness, this will start to feel clunky and inefficient.
Many of the piles of files are old court bundles. A court bundle is a lever arch file compiling all of the documents relevant for a court hearing. Each hearing requires one and as most cases have more than one hearing, cases start to accumulate a steadily growing pile of old bundles. We often have to provide a large number of bundles for each hearing; hearings about children dealt with by family magistrates require four bundles to be sent to the court, one for each magistrate and one for the court legal adviser, which clutter up the court office so they tend to hand them back to us at the end of each hearing. I cannot say that I am keen to lug four lever arch files back to the office along with all the other stuff that I take to court. Then, if a barrister was instructed, eventually his or her clerk will return the barrister’s copy of the bundle to you. The pile of lever arch files stuffed with hundreds of pages slowly grows and grows.
So, I have invested in bundle creation software. This allows me to construct a bundle very quickly by uploading the documents from my PC to a secure cloud server where the software puts it all together and paginates it for me. Then I click a button, it creates the bundle and gives me the option of emailing it. The recipient receives an email, with a link and a separate email with a password to allow them to log on, download the bundle to their laptop or tablet and avoid a huge paper bill.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, you may think. Unfortunately, it only really works where the recipient is happy to be paperless. Barristers are increasingly happy to use an electronic bundle. However, litigants in persons may struggle to do so and the Family Court is not yet ready to embrace it. Other branches of the court system cope well with electronic documents; the criminal courts have been paperless for some time. However, the Family Court often gives the impression that they have only recently upgraded from quills to fountain pens.
The electronic age is on the horizon at the Family Court, but it’s not quite here. The current rules on court bundles set out in Practice Direction 27A of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 say that an electronic bundle may only be used with the judge’s permission. I shall be asking judges for permission in future, but magistrates don’t appear to be able to give permission. So, for the time being at least, I will still have to send paper bundles to the court. Therefore, if you see me sprinting out of court after a hearing, it is probably because I am trying to leave before the court asks me to take the court bundles away with me.
28 April 2019