As the government's Digital by Default policy continues to roll out, it is becoming harder and harder to resist the move away from paper – leaving those that stick to it to consider “at what cost?”
In any drive to encourage the adoption of a new product/technology/service two methods can be used - the carrot or the stick (sometimes both if you are feeling particularly Machiavellian!) That analogy, traditionally linked with beasts of burden, is particularly relevant when discussing technology adoption. The carrot leads from the front – an incentive to move forward and progress, whilst the stick is the threat of staying motionless, not moving ahead and remaining stuck where you are.
So, with the Government’s digital by default policy what approach has Companies House recently taken? They’ve used the stick, proposing to increase the cost of registering a charge on Paper by 80%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fees-changes-in-april
The price hike isn’t motivated by greed but by necessity, the Government has to adopt a digital framework to cut the inefficiency and cost that handling paper brings with it – put simply paper is costly and inefficient to use compared to digital methods. As an industry, the legal market uses a lot of paper. A few years ago IBM released research that showed a typical office worker used 10,000 sheets of paper a year.
I’d argue that the legal market is above your “typical” user but for consistency let’s stick with the numbers. In a 100 user law firm that’s a million sheets of A4 paper a year - or 170 trees if you are concerned about your firm’s carbon footprint.
Stepping past the bigger picture, consider the impact that the Companies House decision has financially on law firms. For a firm that submits 200 paper MR01 forms a year, they will see a £2000 cost increase for no further benefit. I’d argue that no firm wants to see £2000 leave their P&L without any return so this fact alone should drive adoption of digital submissions.
Companies House already has a digital solution to replace the paper submission process but, as many who have experienced it know, it’s inadequate for volume submissions or commercial use. Advanced Legal are already working with both the Government and legal firms like Clifford Chance to deliver Laserform Hub, a platform that bridges the gap between the law firm and government portals - providing a single, secure location for submission to multiple government agencies.
That single point of entry to multiple agencies is important because, as time goes by, more and more Government departments are going to shun the paper process in favour of a cheaper more efficient digital one. Firms are going to have to find a way to cope with that change and Laserform Hub provides them with the ideal method to do so.
Of course, the usual caveat of Parliamentary approval still applies to the proposed price hike of submission fees but the reality is the decision is unlikely to change – no one will want to take a step backwards – that’s even worse than staying still.
To find out more about how Advanced Legal is helping Law firms manage the Governments Digital by Default strategy click here.
