CALSPro - California Association of Legal Support Professionals

Top Scanners For Legal Professionals

Posted January 28, 2015 in Education, Technology

Top Scanners for Legal Support Professionals

I recently reached out to several affiliate companies to inquire on which document scanners they use for daily office use and field scanning. I isolated my inquiry primarily to firms who offer photocopy/records retrieval as a service, as they tend to be volume users and have many years of experience. The results varied, as most scanners vary in scan speed and daily usage, or daily duty cycle. To better understand the variety of scanners, Kodak Alaris uses the below classification to determine ideal usage:

NETWORK- Do you have a business process or application that you want to scan documents to directly – without a PC? Do you need to get information into your workflow systems quickly and easily? Network scanners are just what you’re looking for.  Scan to applications, email, fax servers, network folders, FTP sites, printers, flash drives and more. 

DESKTOP- Do you work in a small business or need your own office desktop scanner?  Do you process customer-facing business transactions and need to scan documents quickly?  Our desktop scanners are small, quiet, quick, intelligently designed and connect easily to your office systems.  Perfect for small offices and individual use where ad hoc and transaction scanning is part of your daily routine.

DEPARTMENTAL- Do you work in a busy law firm, insurance claims department, human resource group or government office? Does your daily activity involve scanning documents to business applications, MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT or shared networked folders? Streamline and automate your document management processes with our departmental scanners and benefit from the productivity gains and cost-savings.

PRODUCTION- Do you process huge volumes of documents such as invoices, insurance claims or loan applications? Are you looking for a reliable, robust and affordable high-speed scanner for your centralized operation? Our production scanners redefine productivity, versatility and reliability. They’re ready to tackle the most demanding high-volume requirements.

The above categories give a good description of the various types of scanners available. Picking the right scanner for your office will depend on a multitude of variables. There are many options to consider, such as: volume, scan speeds, color, portability, auto document feeding or flatbed, size of documents scanning. Using the data I collected from other Legal Support Professionals, I summarized the most commonly used scanners in the tables to the right. Using the following categories: scanner brand, model, scan speeds, daily duty cycle and portability, I sorted the scanners from low volume to production grade.

Article Written By: Esteban Pujol, Commercial Process Serving, Inc.

Special CALSPro Member Discount to ServeCon 2015

Posted January 27, 2015 in Conference, Education, Technology

ServeCon is a two day online event for process servers. Over 20 Industry Experts will discuss the key topics shaping our fast changing profession. CALSPro has arranged a 20% early bird discount for its members if you register no later than January 31, 2015.

This is an important and timely event that will address and answer many questions and concerns about the future of our profession, including sessions on The State of e-Filing and e-Service (and what it means for your business), Thinking like an Entrepreneur, Social Media for Process Servers, Employees vs. Independent Contractors, Skip Tracing & Data for Process Servers,  Assault Prevention, Business Growth and Marketing and much, much more.

Click Here to see Topics and Speakers.

Click Here for Discount Registration.

You can attend from the comfort of your office, or download the videos to watch later; but don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

This 2 day event is set for March 26^th and 27^th but hurry and register now (before the discount expires) to save 20%  ! ! !

Cost Associated with Civil Process Service

Posted January 16, 2015 in Education, Insurance, Technology

Whether it comes in the form of a client audit, requests for increased security precautions, new technology requirements for your association or the need to adhere with new licensing laws, compliance can come at a cost to the process servers. Change can be challenging and disrupt workflow, and any advancement will have an effect on the process server. Understanding the reality of these effects and how to incorporate new requirements into your day-to-day operations without sacrificing quality is crucial.

One of the biggest effects on process servers is the cost of complying with new registration requirements, requests from clients, and software needs.

Before we delve into it, remember that there is a two-fold definition of cost:

1. The amount that has to be paid or spent to buy or obtain something.
2. The effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something.

Here, we break down some of the costs, whether monetary, indirectly affecting the bottom line, or a non-financial sacrifice to achieve compliance. This will help you understand what to expect and how to manage the changing needs of your business.

Registration and licensing costs

Being compliant with registration and licensing requirements set by your state or regulating body is one of the most important aspects of staying up-to-date with requirements. The cost of compliance in this scenario can come in a variety of formats: licensing, registration, and application fees, bonds, software subscriptions.

Since California requires process servers to register with the county clerk, this means an expense of around $280 – $330 total. This is based on a:

• $142 registration fee
• $85 fee for fingerprinting
• Approximately $49 – $99 to obtain a $2,000 bond,

Software costs

There are a few reasons process servers can encounter software costs associated with compliance. Your client may be asking for further transparency, which has slowed down your process and requires a lot of your time. You may have received a request from a client to use particular software, or, as part of your compliance, you need to spend less time on the phone with clients and managing your business.

Software can be the solution for myriad costs associated with compliance. Something as simple as using the right affidavit for the matter in line with the requirements of the court falls under the umbrella of compliance. Some clients may ask for GPS coordinates on service attempts or secure data backups. This, too, requires software.

There is a range of software available for process servers, depending on what is most important to you and your business. Many companies offer pricing by jobs with packages for low volume, high volume, and everything in between.

Expect to pay: $29-$219 and beyond (more…)

PDF Basics

Posted January 13, 2015 in Education, Technology

PDF (Portable Document Format) was developed early in the 1990s and has since become the standard in our industry for sharing documents and images.  Basic tools are built in to your printer allowing you to modify and enhance a PDF file. PDFs are really handled only two ways in our industry: printing and scanning. Although programs like Adobe and Adobe LiveCycle are able to create incredibly complicated and interactive PDFs, we are going to stick to a few basic useful fixes.

PRINTING: For most of us, we receive documents (saved as PDFs) and print them for filing or service. Printing a PDF is very easy; however there are a few tricks that can increase the quality. In working with PDFs daily, I find three common issues; printing only selected pages, increasing the size of a PDF image so the court will not reject it, and clearing up blurry PDFs (image or text). When the print menu is up (see Picture A), there are several items that can be manipulated to fix issues:

“Pages to Print:”

This is a great way to select only which pages you want to print: either all pages, just the current page, or between a specified range, which is very helpful for larger PDFs or when only a few select pages are desired.

“Page Sizing & Handling:”

I use this most often for fixing undersized PDFs. Often after a document gets scanned several times, it becomes slightly smaller each time to where the court may reject it. There is an easy way to quickly adjust the size of an image and make it larger. By using the “Custom Scale” the PDF size can be increased to a size that will be acceptable. In most cases, enlarging between 105% – 110% will fix most shrinkage issues. Adjust as needed.

“Properties:”

Often PDFs will be scanned in full color which will picks up all the subtle colors on a page and may cause blurry images or text when printed. If this occurs, try clicking the properties button to bring up your printer’s settings and select “grayscale” or “Print Black and White.” This setting is determined by your printer, and although we all have different printers, most all printers have some type of grayscale/B&W setting that can be turned on.

SCANNING: In order to get completed work, proofs, etc., back to our clients, we need to scan it. In the scanning world, the quality of the PDF image comes down to DPI or “Dots per Inch.” Sending back PDFs to clients that are scanned in at a terrible quality can reflect negatively on a business.

The higher the DPI, the better the quality of the PDF. For example, a PDF scanned in at 150 x 150 will have much less quality and detail than a PDF scanned in at 300 x 300. For most scanners the highest DPI is 600 x 600, which is excellent quality. The downside to always scanning at very high quality is that the higher the DPI the more space the PDF will take up on a hard drive and the slower it may transmit. For example, if you scan 50 pages at 600 x 600, then the PDF might take up so much space that it cannot be emailed; however, if you scan it at 300 x 300 it might be under the email attachment limit. Therefore, when scanning and adjusting your DPI, it is important to try and get the best quality for the size and application of the file. This adjustment is made directly on your scanner, or within the scanning software. Lastly, scanning in color is not really needed often; however there are a few things to consider when scanning in color. Scanning in color greatly increases the size of PDFs over black and white, and leaves the possibility that the party printing the PDF might get blurry text because text is then scanned as a picture. So by modifying the grayscale, you may enhance the clarity of the text when printing color scans.

Davis Best, United Process Servers, Inc.
Technology Committee Member

California Notary Law Update

Posted January 9, 2015 in Court Updates, Education

CA Notary Law Update: CA Senate Bill 1050
Senate Bill 1050 is the latest change to the form and wording of the statutory certificates of acknowledgment, jurat and proof of execution prescribed under California law in recent years. SB 1050 adds a prescribed consumer disclosure to each of these certificates.

Signed:  August 15, 2014  Effective:  January 01, 2015  – Chapter: 197

This amends Civil Code Sections 1189 and 1195, and Government Code Section 8202

The following are changes:

1.Requires the statutory acknowledgment, jurat and proof of execution certificate to contain a prescribed consumer disclosure in a box at the top of each certificate.

2.Requires the prescribed disclosure to be legible.

3.Clarifies that the physical format of the boxed notice in the new law is an example, for purposes of illustration and not limitation, of the physical format of the boxed notice that fulfills the requirement of the new law.

Additional Analysis:

Senate Bill 1050 is the latest change to the form and wording of the statutory certificates of acknowledgment, jurat and proof of execution prescribed under California law in recent years. In taking an acknowledgment that will be filed in the state of California, or any jurat or proof of execution, a Notary must use the exact form of the certificate as contained in statute for each of these acts. SB 1050 adds a prescribed consumer disclosure to each of these certificates.

The wording of the disclosure, which is identical for each of the three certificates, reads: “A notary public or other officer completing this certificate verifies only the identity of the individual who signed the document to which this certificate is attached, and not the truthfulness, accuracy, or validity of that document.” This disclosure must appear in a box at the top of the certificate. The purpose of this new law is to cut down on fraud. According to the author in the bill analysis presented to the California Legislature, “When people are unfamiliar with the meaning and effect of a notary’s seal and signature, there is an opportunity for criminals to pass deceptive legal documents claiming a false right to money, authority, or real property by inferring, suggesting, or stating that the notary’s seal and signature constitute an official endorsement of authenticity. SB 1050 seeks to reduce fraud by including a clear consumer notification statement as to the limited effect of a notary’s seal and signature. People unfamiliar with notary seals who are studying a fraudulent document presented to them will not give undue consideration to a notary seal as an official endorsement of authenticity and legal correctness.”

Technically, the facts attested by a Notary in an acknowledgment, jurat or proof of execution are stated in the certificate a Notary signs and seals. Reading the certificates would prove that a Notary does not certify to the truthfulness, accuracy or validity of the document, raising a question of why this new law was needed. However, given how we have become accustomed to seeing such disclosures appearing in contracts, insurance policies, mortgage loans and other legal documents, the author of this bill and the California Secretary of State’s office believes a plain language notice that the public can understand will help dispel any doubt about what a California Notary can do.

To Read the bill text:  http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB1050&search_keywords=