Using RFID technology in law offices

An out-of-the-box way to spend less time and money tracking down missing files.

I just received a letter about how law offices are using RFID tags and technologies to track down “lost” files. This was an AHA moment for me regarding how law firms could use a current technology that has recently been in the news.

You probably have heard of those tags. They are small chips that send out radio waves that scanners can read. They are being implanted in pets so that lost pets can be scanned to help determine the owner of the pet based on the information in the chip. A variety of articles have described how Wal-Mart will be requiring its vendors to place chips at least on the pallets they ship to help Wal-Mart with its inventory control.

Ultimately, RFID tags may be attached to every product you buy in a supermarket. Then, when you check out, a scanner at the cash register will read each tag, transmit the information to the cash register, and your bill will be totaled. And then, you won’t have to take everything out of your grocery cart for the cashier only to have to reload the cart after your purchases have been rung up by the cashier.
Well, law firms are now using the technology to find “lost” or “misplaced” files that have been squirled away in some lawyer’s office.

One article describes how Fish & Richardson P.C., a firm that specializes in patent and trademark law, installed an RFID system to track legal files at its Boston office. “By reducing the amount of time needed to locate files, the new system will save the law firm an estimated $144,000 a year. It used to be that once a week, an e-mail would go around the department asking everyone about the whereabouts of a lost file. . . That virtually never happens now.”
Another article describes the results that Fulbright &Jaworski’s Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group had: “It took only a few weeks in the beta test for the department skeptics to become believers.”
If you want more detailed information, RFID Journal has a technical definition of the RFID system:
“Radio frequency identification, or RFID, is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects. There are several methods of identification, but the most common is to store a serial number that identifies a person or object, and perhaps other information, on a microchip that is attached to an antenna (the chip and the antenna together are called an RFID transponder or an RFID tag). The antenna enables the chip to transmit the identification information to a reader. The reader converts the radio waves reflected back from the RFID tag into digital information that can then be passed on to computers that can make use of it.”

Source :

http://www.outoftheboxlawyering.com/uncategorized/using-rfid-technology-in-law-offices-an-out-of-the-box-way-to-spend-less-time-and-money-tracking-down-missing-files/