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Peter von Elling :: pvonelling@sagesol.com
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Take our Speed Survey on Dual Monitor Applications! |
The digitization of documents in law firms is a wonderful development: off-site storage is now the server room; information flows freely through your organization; and employees have more information at their fingertips. So why are your attorneys and staff still printing so much paper? In most cases, the paper just sits on someone’s desk for reference while they input data or draft another document. These people are not Luddites or seeking to single-handedly destroy the Brazilian rainforest, but when digitization solved the paper problem, it created another: how to view a document while working on another application on a computer monitor.
The answer is so obvious it is easily overlooked. For those in data-entry or research intensive positions, give them a second monitor. Given the rapidly falling prices of flat panel monitors, providing certain practice support staff and maybe some attorneys with two medium-sized monitors that act like one is cheaper and more productive than the current paper-printing madness or providing a single, larger monitor. Dual monitor solutions can have a tremendous, immediate impact on the productivity and efficacy of your litigation support, docketing, and accounting staff.
Dual monitors are a solution to what is inherently a dual problem. Whether coding documents or drafting a brief, only rarely do people enter data or write something without referencing other documents. Reference documents used to sit on our desks, but since they became digital, screen space has been swapped for desk space. The physical size for digitized documents is practically zero when stored. When used, however, their screen size returns to 100 percent if it is to be both legible and readable. On a computer monitor, that means overlapping, where the window displaying the referenced item overlaps the window displaying the working application. Users must toggle between windows, which is inefficient, frustrating, and can cause errors in transcription because a window is obscured. In response, employees developed a very low tech solution: print out the reference material. A dual monitor setup overcomes this problem as one screen displays the reference material and the other the working material.
For data-entry intensive positions, like docketing, litigation support, or accounting, your employees will be more productive with a dual monitor setup compared to either a single monitor or the time consuming paper-printing process. Many studies have found that workers in many different work environments are more productive (20-50% more) and effective with dual monitors, and multiple monitors have become the norm in the financial services industry. Presenting the reference material alongside the working application means that there will be fewer transcription errors, thus improving the overall quality of the data. Staff will be more productive since less time will be spent printing documents and switching between those documents and the monitor, or toggling between applications.
