National firm BLM is to try and become fully paperless, the firm has announced, in a move it says could save £3.5m.

The insurance risk and commercial firm said it wants all of its lawyers to be working in a paperless way, running cases from start to finish, by next year. The firm will launch the programme in its Birmingham office before expanding it to London, Bristol and Southampton.

BLM has already gone ‘paper-lite’ in several departments since 2015, encouraging the scanning of all case files and post. But the Birmingham office is to becoming entirely paperless. The office will also move from five floors to four later this month.

Under the paperless approach post will be scanned and distributed automatically in the form of a ‘virtual post tray’ to every individual. Scanned documents are also saved into the firm’s case management system with support of Intapp software.

Matthew Harrington, senior partner at BLM, said: ‘Like most firms in the legal sector we had become heavily reliant on paper and hard copy case files; this not only damages the environment but is also costly in terms of paper use and storage.’

Barristers’ set Seven Bedford Row is among legal outfits to announce efforts to reduce the amount of paper it uses. It launched a ‘paper-light’ policy in 2017.