When I started my law practice, I didn’t have the money or the sense to go paperless.  Approximately 1 year later, I did just that because 1. I had enough money to buy a scanner and 2. I couldn’t afford not to.

One of the main things I did to go paperless was to throw away (actually it’s still in my garage collecting dust) my fax machine and replace it with an efax service.  There were many to choose from and I looked at comparison sites such as faxcompare.com.  I looked at the cost and how many pages I could receive and send each month and ease of doing so.

I was told by several people that they had trouble with one efax service or another so I also did a search online for reviews.  Ultimately I chose myfax.com. I didn’t choose it because it was the cheapest (because it was not).  Nor did I choose it because of its ease of use (although it is pretty easy to use).  I chose it because it was the only service I could find that when I called their 800 number, there was a real, living, breathing human being on the other side to help me set up and answer my questions.  I chose it for its customer service and I still don’t regret it.

Efaxing is easy on myfax.  If I have a document I need to fax, I simply attach it as an attachment on an email and send it to the recipient’s phone number followed by @myfax.com.  I can attach WORD documents, PDFs, JPGS, or anything else that I want to transmit.  I can also attach more than one file if I want to send multiple documents or attach a cover letter separately from the rest of the document.  I can also write in the body of the email as an alternative to sending a separate cover letter.

Receiving email is equally simple.  I had a land-line where my fax number was located.  I simply asked customer service at myfax to port my fax number over to their service and voila, it was done.  It took approximately one week but one week later, I was up and running.  Every time I would receive a fax, it would come into my email inbox as a pdf attachment.  This was extremely convenient now that I was paperless because I would scan all my documents as pdfs anyways.

The advantage of using efax is really to save paper.  I don’t have to print out a document simply to fax it.  Nor do I have to receive a piece of paper if someone is faxing me something.  If I want to print it, I will.  If not necessary, I’ll just read it on my computer screen and save it in my folders.

Contrary to popular internet rhetoric, faxing is not dead.  It’s been around since the 70s and people still use it.  Ditching it altogether will not make you cool or trendy.  It’ll just make it inconvenient for some people to send you stuff.  Upgrade to efaxing so you can be conveniently reached and also trendy.