The OBJ Technology Advantage While no computer can serve as a substitute for hard work and good judgment in a lawyer, Orr Brown Johnson constantly invests in the cutting edge technology that is necessary to compete in win in modern legal disputes. The firm was “ahead of the curve” in the adoption of Microsoft Exchange server technology and high-speed scanning in the early 2000′s, which allowed all of its attorneys and staff to work from a shared technology platform. Constant investments since have kept the firm “ahead of the pack.” Today, OBJ utilizes Virtual Private Networks to link its geographically disbursed offices in real time and insure that, regardless of whether one of our attorneys is in court in Gainesville, Georgia or preparing for a deposition in Chicago, Illinois, the attorney always has instant access to all file materials.
OBJ operates a largely “paperless” practice with traditional paper files maintained for redundancy. All attorneys and staff members have state-of-the art document processing software on their desktops. File documents are scanned, bates labeled, and stored on an Exchange server in PDF format, reducing clutter and inefficiency associated with paper files. If a client or judge needs a document, it can be delivered in seconds, not days. The high-volume document exchanges that are often necessary in, e.g., commercial loan disputes, are handled using a cloud-based sharing solution with controlled access. Repeated use of mail and express delivery are thus replaced with clicks of a mouse. Boxes full of documents are thus replaced with an icon on our server. Giant briefcases full of paper are replaced by a single laptop. Advanced trial presentation software allows us to organize and present these documents in courtrooms for maximum advantage.
OBJ’s technological investments also include state-of-the art legal research capability. The firm has invested in NEXT technology from Thomson West, which gives us Google-like smart research capability that simply was not available in the recent past. This technology allows OBJ to search statutes, cases, and regulations from all 50 states in fractions of a second. Our online research databases include secondary sources, law reviews, treatises, and journals numbering literally in the thousands. Entire law libraries of information are available to our attorneys from any computer terminal anywhere in the world. This allows us to leverage the research work done by others so we do not have to do it for our clients.
What does all of this mean for our clients? It can be summed up in a single word: efficiency. OBJ believes that its technology investments allow it to access law and information faster than its competition. Outside of the courtroom, that results in costs savings to the client when a task that would take an hour to complete under less advanced systems can be done in minutes by our attorneys. Inside the courtroom, this technological advantage translates directly in to a competitive advantage for our clients in the form of a more organized and effective case. This is the technological advantage that our clients enjoy.