by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
How documents are handled and what you can do with them has come a long way in the past few years. That’s especially true for people in the legal profession.
For years there were basically two types of documents: letter-size and legal-size. Today the same data can be stored electronically in a variety of formats, each with its own characteristics, advantages and even disadvantages.
The incumbent diversity of document formats has led to a merger between two businesses well-versed in everything from plain paper to encrypted metafile and beyond.
Clay Cross made his first plain paper copy more than 18 years ago. His Downtown Business Centers, Inc. at 1 Independent Dr. opened 12 years ago and soon became a regular stop for business and legal clients. When the electronic revolution began several years ago, Cross made the decision to stick with what he knew he did better than his competitors and out-sourced the high-tech part of the business.
Last summer, Dave Luyando relocated his Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) business to Jacksonville from New York. Through a unique series of events — including Cross buying a document services company from Luyando’s landlord — the two met and soon discovered they shared the same business philosophies when it came to customer and client service.
“We have a lot of experience handling paper and Dave has a lot of experience handling data,” said Cross. “I had outsourced EDD services for years. It was a best-case scenario for me and my clients when Dave came to Jacksonville. The level of expertise and experience he brought to this market truly sets us apart from any competition in Jacksonville and in my eyes, Florida.”
Luyando recalled, “As soon as I met Clay I knew we were on the same page — no pun intended.”
JaxDox, the company Luyando set up when he relocated from New York, has moved into the space adjacent to Cross’s Downtown Business Center at Independent Square. While customers won’t notice much difference at the service counter where the copiers have been for years, if you go through a few doors and down a hallway, you enter a very high-tech area. It’s equipped with the latest data retrieval and management equipment including very advanced computers.
“There’s nothing off-the-shelf when it comes to our computer power. We designed it and built it ourselves,” said Luyando.
Cross said he’s amazed by the number of documents that can be copied, analyzed and reproduced in a given period of time. “What used to be a three-week job we can now do in three days or less.”
The amount of information that can be contained and even hidden in a document is one of the biggest changes, especially when it comes to documents involved in litigation, said Luyando.
“With a conventional document — words printed on paper — you can pick it up, read and understand it,” he said. “With an electronic document, depending on the format, we can tell you who else also read the document, when they read it and even where they read it. In terms of e-mail in many cases we can determine addresses the original was forwarded to and even whether it was copied from one computer to another with a thumb drive, for instance. Different formats allow different levels of access to data.”
Even with all the technology, Cross said the new partnership has no plans to abandon any form of document technology.
“Our business started out with paper and it still is about paper because most of our clients still want paper,” said Cross. “But we’re showing them how to use electronic documents.”
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