Goldsmith Williams Solicitors Automates 1.6 Million Legal Documents Per Year

Legal firms deal with a huge amount of paper documents. In Goldsmith Williams Solicitors’ case, more than 8,500 pages of mail arrive everyday. Using an automated processing solution based on Kofax Capture™, Goldsmith Williams gained benefits and productivity savings “even higher than expected,” including a savings of £500k in the first full year following implementation.

Traditionally, legal firms deal with thousands of paper documents. GWS is no exception on that score. On a daily basis, so many personal injury claims, court documents, conveyancing documents and loan agreements hit the desks of Goldsmith´s officials. Maria Rodman, Head of Administration & Compliance at Goldsmith, knows firsthand of the problems caused by relying on information hidden in unorganized piles of paper.

“Goldsmith Williams receives more than 8500 pages of mail per day. It´s nearly impossible to manually process this deluge of highly sensitive paperwork in an accurate, cost effective and timely manner,” Rodman explained. “The tedious sorting, internal distribution, data entry and, once stored, retrieval of important client documents negatively impacted each employees productivity. Due to this unacceptable situation, we decided to look for a robust business process automation solution that was capable of managing our enterprise’s different document types while maintaining the highest standard of quick turnaround time and that would improve our service level agreements to keep our competitive edge.”

Goldsmith Williams´ criteria checklist for the potential new solution was detailed and comprehensive. After scanning, the solution should reliably classify all documents, automatically extract relevant data and then index it to the correct case reference. The solution should ensure proper mail categorization to enable prioritization and allow a seamless electronic flow of information both internally and externally. It should vastly avoid any manual engagement, should easily fit into the existing SQL backend infrastructure and should overall improve space, auditing, efficiency and business continuity.

The law firm started an extensive market research in order to identify the best available market offer and finally concluded that Kofax® document driven business process automation solutions would be the perfect fit. Goldsmith Williams turned to Capital Capture, a certified Kofax Solution Provider. Capital Capture developed and implemented an automated processing solution based on Kofax Capture™, the world’s leading capture platform for automating document driven business processes and Kofax Transformation™, which streamline the transformation of business documents into structured electronic information by automating the processes of document classification and data extraction.

Tailored around customer specific workflows implemented by Capital Capture, the new solution went live after a successfully completed pilot phase and revolutionized Goldsmith Williams´ operational procedures. The Kofax solution, using powerful learn-by-example artificial intelligence to teach itself document classification and extraction, captures all incoming documents as soon as they enter the organization. The extracted data then gets categorized, prioritized and released to the firms case management system and in parallel to Goldsmith Williams´ central repository and can be accessed from each desk within seconds. By linking into Goldsmith Williams “GWLive” portal, the solution also grants the firm´s clients a 24/7 real-time access to the current status of their individual cases.

The implementation of the new BPA-solution at Goldsmith Williams demonstrates the manifold benefits of Kofax’s information capture technology in high-volume capture environments.

“The overall benefits and productivity savings yielded by the new solution are even higher than expected,” Rodman concludes. “The implementation has revolutionized workflow within Goldsmith Williams, resulting in significant service level improvements and productivity, providing our clients with a transparent view of the status of their case and a choice as to how and when we communicate with them. Our clients have assurances that even in the event of a disaster, Goldsmith Williams can continue to function with minimum disruption. Paper and consumable use has decreased substantially, which in turn leads to cost savings not to mention a greener Goldsmith Williams. The ROI was realized after just nine months, resulting in savings of just over £500k in the first full year following implementation.”