Good design is concerned with the environment. Good design is as little design as possible. Timeless principles of good design.
Traditional law firms operate at a high cost to the environment. A typical lawyer uses 20,000 to 100,000 sheets of paper per year. 100,000 sheets of paper equals 4.5 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
FreedMcKeen, LLC is not a traditional law firm.
Paper has other environmental costs as well. Paper then has to be filed and securely stored for a period of years. Lawyers have to travel to look at paper. Paper uses ink. Paper has to be mailed. All at further cost to the environment.
In designing our firm we have pegged paper as enemy number one. Our office is designed to minimize the use of paper. We scan everything. We then shred documents through EnviroShredCT. We store our data securely and it is backed up at least 4x every hour.
We do not print emails. Emails are stored securely in a searchable database. Important emails are easily accessed by every member of our firm from anywhere at anytime. We encourage opposing counsel and clients to deal email us PDFs instead of sending us mail. We have an e-Fax service that converts incoming faxes into PDFs. When you send us a fax it never prints.
We’ll never completely eliminate the need for paper, however, our firm has been designed to use as little paper as possible.
Our physical office space has been designed to force us to think about printing. Our desks are upstairs and our printer will be downstairs. We have opted for open space instead of rooms filled with filing cabinets. When you walk in, you’ll see our desks. We do not want our clients to see a cluttered mess.
This minimizes our environmental impact and maximizes our ability to efficiently deliver high quality services to our clients.
_______________________
FreedMcKeen, LLC represents individuals and businesses in the Greater Hartford area.
