Litigation copying/scanning

[donald4887]

Hi All,
This is my first post....Question is we do a lot of litagation copying...now our clients want the same copies ..Scanned and put on disc as a pdf/ocr....would we use the same pricing structure as copying? Any feedback would be appreciated...Thanks Don

 

[adub47]

Don,

The pricing structure for the copying should be totally different. There should be a charge for converting to PDF and OCR that is usually around $.02 or $.03 per page and that would be on top of the copying charge. Then you should charge for creation of a master CD which is usually $35 and the price to burn copies around $5 a piece. Also if the client wants a specific folder structure on the CD you should charge an hourly tech time rate to create the folder structure. What ever OCR engine you decide to purchase will help you decide what to charge to start making your money back on the software. So I would say you have consider other factors...the pricing cost structure is about the same but there are some add ons yo have to consider and some things are a bit cheaper than normal copying like the OCR

Hope this helps!

 

[oxburger]

Another consideration is who would be responsible for checking the copy for accuracy after the OCR. I'm sure since it's litigation, it would have to be pretty accurate.

 

[mattbeals]

I wouldn't necessarily use the same price as copying since there are no consumables used. You may just want to mark up your per click charge. For the OCR though, that's a different story. Right now it seems to be the Abbyy Recognition Server seems to be the most common server solution. Various versions have the ability to use a client where OCR suspects are sent to be verified/corrected. There are other tools like Abbyy such as Cvision Maestro Recognition Server which work extremely well. Most of the legal documents that I have run into in my own divorce and working with attorneys use some variant of Time New Roman. Even with second and third generation copies the accuracy has been excellent using the built in OCR tools in Acrobat Pro, Maestro and Abbyy. I know that Maestro uses a "deductive license" where you buy so many pages at a time and then relicense when you run out. It's an extremely fast engine that runs multiple instances so you could easily chew through a basic license very quickly. I'm not sure how Abbyy's license works. I suppose you would want to call around to other litigation support companies and ask them how much they are charging and then price accordingly. Depending on the workflow that you use building the folder structures may take no time at all. I know with the Konica Biz Hub Pro 1050's that I used for my needs I could easily define FTP or SMB directories to send the files to right off the device. You can also send emails right from there too. But you'll want to call around and gauge your regions average price.

It's a growing business if you can get into it.

 

[michaelejahn]

I worked for a company named ELAN GMK several years ago.

We provided this service.

There is a lot you might nee to know before you scan of course, we liked to use this long scary form to help people understand that the price is quite dependent on what we are given, the time frame and what they need the scanned archive to do.

--> General Business — ELAN GMK

We used ELAN Capture (our own software) and I have use ABBYY fine reader.

We had a truck to pick up rooms of documents - we normally had to prepare the files for scanning (removing staples and such), adding barcode separator sheets (which helped us organize and add chapters / sections to the data file / pdf export) then scanning, then processing, OCRing and indexing as well burning the DVDS and returning the files into the same order they were.

This was sometime done on site (when the documents were in a secure environment)

see this link --> Michael Jahn's blog

there is a slide show at this blog post that describes the process...

it was more typical that we charged 25 - 35 cents per page (duplexed)

in some projects, it was higher, but very few were lower.

The PDF files need to be Beats stamped, BTW.

There is a nice blog for the 'roll you own' folks here;

--> Acrobat for Legal Professionals

This is not for amateurs. I have used ARCHIVE IT! Box Storage, E-Docs Solutions, Document Destruction - ArchiveIt.com in Southern California and would highly recommend them, ask for Guy Puckett