REAL ESTATE
Bye-bye fax machine are taking a lot of paper-based busywork out of the transaction.
Automated mortgage-processing systems BY K E V IN MARRON
with state-of-the-art online systems. But there was one piece of inefficient old technology that he and his partner at the Van- couver-based Bell Alliance law firm could not get rid of: the ubiquitous fax machine.
W
hen he returned to private practice after many years as a staff lawyer and real es- tate technology guru at the Law Society of British Columbia, Ron Usher helped establish an almost paperless law office
Usher calls the fax "the world's most successful quality-
reduction device." He says it's slow; it churns out poor quality data that can't be reused or easily revised; it provides clients with a bad experience in dealing with ugly, sometimes illeg- ible documents; and it wastes everyone's time. Yet it still rules the roost in the real estate world. What Usher finds particularly ironic is that the main rea-
son for keeping the fax machine around is to enable this high- tech law firm to exchange mortgage documents with financial
www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com M ARCH 2008 19
MICK COULAS
