Modern Law Firms Adopting PDF-as-a-Service Philosophy

22
Jun
2023

Editor

AaS (As a service) business models have existed for decades as evidenced by the most well-known and most subscribed service used by all … Energy. On the technology side we have seen the emergence of SaaS (Software as a Service, Security as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and most recently AIaaS (Artificial Intelligence as a Service). 

As with all “As-a-Service” models, the need for costly, complex, and lengthy implementation cost and timelines are eliminated or at least drastically reduced. Subscription-based technology is designed to reduce upfront IT spend, provide predictable pricing, enhance client flexibility, eliminate infrastructure requirements and maintenance, while providing unfettered, anywhere, anytime access to the service.

When it comes to moving applications and services to a cloud ‘’as-a-service” model, law firms are no exception, as any negative stigma and skepticism associated with cloud computing is now behind us. One of the emerging ‘’as-a-service’ trends in Legal that has not gotten much visibility and that we aim to expose here is PDF-as-a-Service (PDFaaS). PDF-as-a-Service is the delivery of the most popular PDF functionality via an Integrated Cloud Service versus reliance on a ‘heavy,’ feature (often too rich), rigidly priced, traditional desktop application. 

We happen to have expertise in the document binding and bundling arena, an area that almost always requires reliance on accessing and using PDF edit /manipulation functionality. Cloud delivery of the PDF functions you need, when and where you need them, already embedded in your other core (bundling or otherwise) applications provides cost effective, use case-specific, and most importantly easy to use and accessible technology.

Cloud Driven Context

While the statistics around law firm cloud adoption, especially with systems like document and practice management, are trending to 90+ percent within the next several years, a similar comparison on the PDF side tells a far different story. According to ILTA Technology Survey data, within the last five years, there has been no change around PDF editing. The same providers are delivering the same legacy functionality, so the gap between where documents are located (in the cloud) and where they're going to be transformed and manipulated (local desktop) is glaring and adding huge overhead and inefficient workflows to the process.

PDF-as-a-Service, as we define it, best represents the current reality of what law firms need delivered where they work. Leading up to ILTACON 2022, Bundledocs asked conference attendees to take a 1-minute survey to help better understand ILTA members’ PDF editing and binding practices, as well as most used features. 25% of survey respondents consider PDF editing/binding tools as part of a ‘cloud first’ strategy, and still, 42% said they “did not know” how this functionality would figure into their existing cloud strategy. 

A well-documented complaint with popular PDF products is that the many features and functions are rarely utilized, overly complex, and difficult to access. In addition, proper use and application of PDF solutions often requires internal PDF experts, firm administrative staff dedicated to “making PDFs work” for the firm. With that reality in mind, the survey feedback we received regarding “most widely used features in a PDF Editor after viewing” was rather telling. Top responses included:

• Splitting/combining/manipulating PDF files (91%)
• OCR of PDF files (73%)
• Annotating and redacting PDF files (69%)
• Converting files to Word or other (69%)
• Text editing (42%)

What stood out to us from this survey result was the popularity of OCR as part of PDF editing process, especially for firms in the US and Canada. This indicates that users want or need, as mandated by court guidelines, fully searchable access to the published PDF content and similar functions as part of their document production workflow. Based on this feedback and supported by numerous conversations with law firm users, the overarching objective has been to address this law firm user reality and provide exposure to cloud services around PDF. 

In Europe and Australia, we have seen a surge in cloud adoption around document bundling and now PDF editing, so we are eager to engage with US and Canadian firms to share best practices and lessons learned around the cloud and the ‘PDF as a Service’ trend.

To that end, we refer to ‘PDFaaS’ as a cloud-based service that provides functionality and tools for working with PDF documents. It allows users to access and utilize PDF-related features and capabilities through an API (Application Programming Interface) or web interface, eliminating or drastically reducing the need to license and maintain traditional PDF processing functionalities in-house.