Document scanning used to mean casting your eyes down a printed page.

Now it refers to the technology of converting pages of text or graphics into electronic formats that can be stored on a computer's hard disk.Scanners, which most often resemble portable photocopiers, have much to offer solicitors, particularly those with small budgets.

Devices that will painlessly turn paper documents into more manageable computer files that can be stored in a fraction of the space are available for just a few hundred pounds.There are two ways to bring paper documents into a computer.

Pages can be scanned in as image files -- similar to a digital photocopy -- although these are difficult to modify.The second option is to use optical character recognition (OCR) software.

Using this scanning method, documents can be converted into ordinary text files, which can then be altered using a word processor.

These files consume far less hard disk space.OCR requires the original document to be of fairly high quality for the software to identify the text correctly.

If it is not, the time it takes to correct the errors present in the final product can make it a pointless exercise.There is a wide variety of scanners, ranging from hand-held black and white scanners to large multi-page, high-resolution colour devices.

Recent developments include page-wide scanners built into keyboards.In general, the higher the resolution of the scanner's output, the higher the cost.

Apart from the scanner, the only hardware required is a reasonably high-powered PC which has, as most do, a free slot inside for an add-on card.For simple applications, such as scanning ordinary printed documents, a low optical resolution of, say, 300 by 300 dots per inch (dpi) is sufficient.

Fo r high quality graphics, a minimum of 600 by 300 dpi is recommended.

'Smoothing' technology, known as software interpolation, included free with most scanners, can increase the resolution of the scanned image.Hand-held devices have the advantage of portability and economy.

The main disadvantage is that they are too narrow to scan an entire page in one pass.

A colour hand-held scanner costs between about £80 and £120 including VAT.A black-and-white hand-held scanner costs between £45 and £60.

A device that connects a scanner to a printer port, useful for notebook PCs, costs about £70, although it is much less if bought with the scanner.Desktop scanners, known as flatbeds, are big enough to accommodate a sheet of A4 paper or larger.

The scanning head moves under a glass screen in much the same way as happens in a photocopier.The cheapest flatbeds start from about £200 for a 300 by 600 dpi colour and mono, including OCR software.

Top-end mono flatbeds that will scan up to 12 pages per minute -- particularly useful for offices -- start from about £2000 inclusive.