The type of scanner you choose depends on the volume of scanning and who is going to be doing the scanning.

Scanners fall into two categories:

Desktop scanners

• Low-end and multifunction (not generally recommended)
• Workgroup (2,000–4,000 pages per day)
• Departmental (4,000–25,000 pages per day)
• Production (30,000–100,000 pages per day)

Network scanners

• Multifunction (useful for occasional scanning of large documents)
• Dedicated (not generally recommended)

Here are a few words on different types of scanners.

Low-End Scanners

Personal multifunction desktop scanners are good for low-volume, ad hoc scanning, such as individual letters or bulletins. Unlike higher-end scanners, you cannot scan directly into Primafact. These scanners produce .pdf files that can then be imported into Primafact.

Workgroup Scanners

These scanners are excellent for ad hoc scanning. The more powerful models in this range are very good for low-volume scanning of case materials and are generally appropriate for smaller firms and sole-practitioners.

Departmental Scanners

These scanners are appropriate for firms with enough volume to warrant dedicating one or more staff to scanning, naming, and organizing case materials.

Production Scanners

These are heavy-duty scanners for medium and large firms with centralized scanning services. A machine of this type would usually be used by a single staff member devoted to scanning, with other staff naming and organizing the scanned documents.

Departmental Multi-Function Copiers

Multi-function copiers (MFCs) are not appropriate as a primary scanner in any but the smallest firms. Because staff also print from these machines periodically all day, it would be impossible to scan documents uninterrupted. Also, scanning using an MFC requires extra steps because the documents cannot be scanned directly into Primafact. However, these machines can be very good for scanning large documents (such as 600-page medical reports). Having an MFC may justify a less expensive choice for your primary scanner.

Dedicated network scanners

These scanners are a fairly recent innovation. They have the power of a low-end workgroup scanner (about 20 pages per minute) and are a good solution if everyone in the office needs to do ad hoc scanning.

Determining your scanner workload

The best way to determine the scanner you need is to measure your daily duty cycle, which is the approximate number of pages you will scan per day.

Experience has taught us that lawyers rarely realize how many pages they process, but there is a simple way to determine the approximate number: A banker’s box typically holds about 1,000–1,500 pages.

So, ask yourself the following question: “How many new cases (assuming an average of one banker’s box per case) does the firm take on each month?”

If the answer is 12, then budget for 12 banker’s boxes, or as many as 18,000 pages per month, which is just under 1,000 pages per day. If the person responsible for scanning has other duties and only scans two or three days a week, you will need to have a scanner that can support a higher daily duty cycle, say between 1,500 and 2,000 pages.

Of course, some cases require many banker’s boxes for all the associated materials, such as a brain injury case, which may require as many as 40–50 banker’s boxes, or a class action, which may use 75–100 or more.

Choosing your scanner

There are four major scanner manufacturers: Canon, Fujitsu, HP, and Kodak. All four have excellent products.

With the exception of HP, all the manufacturers categorize their products as workgroup, departmental, or production; however, there is no consistency about where one category ends and the next one starts.

HP and Kodak have fully embraced the idea of using the daily duty cycle to select a scanner and this number is given for all their models. Unfortunately, Fujitsu and Canon only mention this number on a few of their models.

Tips:

• Make sure the scanner you select has a TWAIN interface
• When reading specifications, be aware that 90% of your scanning will be in black and white at 300 dots per inch (dpi) in simplex (single sided) mode
• You will need to scan in colour. If the scanner you choose will not handle colour, you can choose to get a low-end colour model to supplement the black and white model (note that you can attach more than one scanner to a single workstation)
• Your primary scanner should scan at least 20 pages per minute. Be aware that scanning speed is often given for a resolution of 200 dpi. Since you will be scanning at 300 dpi, the actual speed will be about 60%–75% of the rated speed
• Your primary scanner should have a feeder that can handle 30 pages or more
• Make sure the scanner you choose will handle duplex scanning (scanning both front and back), as this is an important feature
• Check the warranty. Only Kodak has a standard three-year warranty; the rest offer one year (which you may be able to upgrade to three years at a cost)

Popular models

Generally we don’t recommend specific scanners – that is the job of your IT provider. The following models are popular with our customers, and, with the exception of the ScanSnap, popular with us.

Fujitsu fi-6230Z
This model has been around in one form or another for well over a decade. It is a favourite with many of our customers. The combination flatbed and straight-path ADF make for reliability and versatility with a small footprint.

Canon DR-6010C
This is another popular scanner that has been around for a long while. It is robust, reliable, and fast, and is suitable for high-volume scanning (e.g., if your firm is just starting to use Primafact). At 60 pages per minute (at 200 dpi), a banker’s box worth of documents can be scanned in less than half an hour (even at 300 dpi, the preferred scanning resolution).

Kodak i2600
This scanner takes up very little space, which is deceptive, because it is a very fast scanner (50 pages per minute at 300 dpi) and has a feeder capacity of 70 sheets. Because of its small size, it is a very nice scanner to have sitting on your desk – convenient and fast, yet unobtrusive.

Fujitsu ScanSnap
The Fujitsu ScanSnap gets special mention because it is a very popular low-end scanner that is very attractive if you are budget-conscious. We do not recommend it because it does not have a TWAIN interface and thus cannot scan directly to Primafact.

If you decide to go with a ScanSnap for ad hoc scanning, be aware that users will have to perform an extra step: the ScanSnap saves .pdf files to the hard drive and then those files have to be imported into Primafact.

With Primafact you can implement any of three different scanning workflow models: centralized, distributed, or hybrid. Each is described below, with its associated pros and cons.

Centralized model

Incoming mail is given directly to the scan operator, who immediately scans the material into Primafact. Once each piece is scanned, the scan operator moves it into the Primafact Inbox for the responsible clerk, paralegal, or assistant who then names the document and files it in the appropriate binder. Once the mail is scanned, it is put away in a banker’s box for storage, filed, or shredded.

Pros:

• The turnaround time is often much faster when documents are given directly to a scan operator
• Documents are less likely to get lost or borrowed by someone before scanning, and thus be inadvertently omitted from Primafact
• Quality control is improved because scanning is done by one person or by a scanning department in larger firms
• Your cost may be lower because a scan operator doesn’t require specialized legal knowledge, and thus does not need to be a clerk or paralegal who would be higher paid

Cons:

• You must assign a backup person in case the scan operator is away from the office for any reason
• You may need a full-time employee if the daily volume of incoming documents is high

Distributed model

Incoming mail is distributed to clerks, paralegals, and assistants, who are responsible for scanning and filing the documents. These staff scan, name, and file all new documents into the appropriate binder(s).

Pros:

• The workload is spread across a number of people
• A dedicated employee is not required to scan incoming documents

Cons:

• Sometimes scanning isn’t done in a timely fashion because of other demands on the time of clerks, paralegals, and assistants
• Documents are more likely to get lost or borrowed by someone before scanning, and thus be inadvertently omitted from Primafact
• The quality and consistency may vary because scanning is done by a number of people
• The scanning process may be disrupted if the clerk, paralegal, or assistant is on vacation, off sick or does not have enough time in the day to complete their scanning tasks in addition to their other tasks

Hybrid model

The hybrid model is based on the distributed model, but with large scanning jobs done by either a third party scanning company or the print/scan/copy department in the firm.

Pros:

• The workload is spread across a number of people
• Internal resources can better focus on their primary tasks

Cons:

• Sometimes scanning isn’t done in a timely fashion because of other demands on the time of clerks, paralegals, and assistants
• Documents are more likely to get lost or borrowed by someone before scanning, and thus be inadvertently omitted from Primafact
• The quality and consistency may vary because scanning is done by a number of people
• Outsourcing may be more expensive on a cost per page basis than performing the task internally

• Colour documents that contain no text that don’t need to be displayed in colour in Primafact should be set for 300dpi, greyscale
• Colour documents that you want to display in colour in Primafact should be set for 600dpi, colour
• Greyscale should only be selected for images and pictures (not text)

Tips:

• Remember to change the settings back to the default – black and white, 300dpi – once you are finished
• Scanning in greyscale and colour take longer and take up more space in your Primafact database

Typical scan settings for letter size black and white pages.

More scanning tips:

• Consider a scanner with a flat bed for scanning small documents (e.g., receipts). It will take less time to get such documents into the system. Some clients report they tape receipts to paper and then photocopy them
• If a document original is very light, try adjusting the brightness of the scan downward. OCR may not provide good results from a very light document
• Do a test scan of documents on colored paper. Scan and then view in Primafact and adjust the brightness or contrast in the scanner settings as necessary
• If you have trouble feeding a document into your scanner, feed it in upside down (i.e., spin the pages 180 degrees). Once the document is in Primafact, you can rotate it quickly using Primafact’s rotate option
• Have a dedicated work area for scanning with the following available: staple remover, stapler, rubber stamp for marking documents as scanned and space to organize your documents
• Consider organizing your documents according to type to minimize the need to change your scanner settings: letter and legal size; single and double sided; color, greyscale, and black and white; flatbed scanning

Once your scan station is set up and you have scanned a variety of documents, scanning into Primafact will be easy!