More on the Efficiency of E

As yet further proof, if any additional proof is necessary,  of the
labor saved as a result of e-filing, the Daily  Record, Baltimore's
legal and business paper, had an  article entitled: "Oh, Brave
e-World:Legal service  companies must evolve or perish as public 
documents go online" 

The first paragraphs were as follows: 

 Once upon a time, Document Technology Inc.'s booth  in Baltimore's
U.S. Bankruptcy Court was a bustling  workplace where as many as three
workers spent the  day filling telephone and fax orders for court
documents and the telephones never stopped ringing. 

 Dr. Seuss-ian stacks of bright-colored case files  teetered on every
desk, corner and counter surface;  inbound and outbound carts were
piled with case files  inbound from and outbound to file rooms in
Baltimore's  federal district and bankruptcy courts, and two copiers 
ran almost incessantly. 

Then came e-filing. 

Although not as stark as in Whoville after the Grinch's  pre-Christmas
visit, the stacks of case files began to  disappear as more people
started getting their own  copies online. 

And the three workers became one. 

In essence, the company is relegated to retrieving  records from
before e-filing was instituted, a business  that will obviously
decline over time. 

>>Further down, the article addressed similar trends in  corporate and
business public records: 

 David O. Smith, owner of Maryland Document Retrieval  and Paralegal
Services on North Charles Street in  Baltimore, acknowledges that the
work service  companies traditionally have done is disappearing. 
Smith's plan is to get licensed and bonded to go into the  title
business. 

"People will always be buying and selling houses" that  won't go away.
But I guess eventually that will be online  too "but long after I’m
out of the business," Smith said  with a smile. 

Smith's abstracting work currently involves tax lien,  judgment and
litigation searches, as well as background  checks and title search
bring-to-dates at the state and  federal courthouses. 

However, Smith said he does most of his work at the  State Department
of Assessment and Taxation, filing  and getting certified copies of
corporate charters, and  filing UCC secured interest documents and
searching  the UCC database. 

"E-filing at the state level: that'll take away all the  business,
especially if they start doing certified copies  on line," he said.  

 Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code was revised  in 2001 to
allow UCCs to be e-filed. Maryland is among  the majority of states
that revised their versions of the  model law to allow online security
filings, but is not  among more than half the states which already
have  created Web sites through which the public can file  UCC
financing statements. 

This is one of the bread-and-butter services that service  companies
provide though now the public can  download the forms themselves and
fax them in  completed. 

Wayne M. Skinner, deputy director of the State  Department of
Assessments and Taxation, said that  with a start-up/conversion
ballpark price tag of  $500,000, online UCC filing is on the
department's wish  list but not anticipated to start any time soon. 

That's welcome news to Smith and other small legal  service companies'
owners. 

"Charter work and filings are the main part of my  business," Smith
said, adding that certificates of status  were about a third of his
business until the state made  them available online. "I file about 15
charter documents  a day, that is, filing charter documents and
getting  certified copies of charter documents." 

Because charter documents from 2001 forward can be  accessed online,
most copy orders are for certified  copies which the clerk's office
must certify with a seal  and do not do electronically. 

"That's the only thing saving us, because they can't  certify them on
the Internet," he said. 

"Eventually, I think, the online services will take all our  business
away. And I'll go do something else," Smith  chuckled. "They've been
gradually chopping away at it."  

>>>I can email anyone who wants it a copy of the entire  article. 

******************************************** 
Stuart Levine 
Fisher & Winner, LLP 
315 North Charles Street 
Baltimore, Maryland 21201 
Telephone:             410.385.2000 
Telecopier:              443.927.7075 
Cellphone:               410.802.5817 
Weblog:  http://taxbiz.blogspot.com 
http://www.taxation-business.com 
[email protected] 
********************************************* 



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