What does OCR do for a law firm?
Many documents arrive as scans: a judgment, a registered letter, documents from a client. Without text recognition these are images you cannot search. Advoca performs OCR (optical character recognition) in Dutch, French and English. The text is usually searchable within a minute of uploading.
Full-text search
Search for a name, a reference or a phrase. Advoca shows the documents with an excerpt in which your search term is highlighted. The search box at the top (omnisearch) searches contacts, matters and documents at the same time.
Organised by matter and folder
Documents belong to a matter and sit in folders, for example Correspondence, Proceedings and Client documents. A download gives you exactly the same file you uploaded: Advoca does not alter your documents.
Which files does Advoca read?
| File | How Advoca reads the text |
|---|---|
| PDF with a text layer (from Word, e-filing, the court registry) | The text is read directly |
| Scanned PDF without a text layer | OCR in Dutch, French and English (the first 50 pages of each document) |
| Photo or scan (PNG, JPG, TIFF) | OCR |
| Word document (DOCX) | The text of the document is read |
| Text file | As it is |
Smart search: phrases, combinations and exclusions
The search box understands the way you search in a search engine, and takes Dutch word forms into account (search for huurovereenkomst and you also find huurovereenkomsten); for texts in other languages, it is best to search for the exact word as it appears in the document:
- "three months' notice" in quotation marks searches for the exact phrase.
- lease OR tenancy finds documents containing either word.
- damage -compensation excludes documents containing the second word.
How it works in practice
- You open the matter and choose the folder, for example Client documents.
- You upload the file. Advoca keeps the original unchanged.
- In the background Advoca reads the text; for a scan it runs OCR.
- Usually within a minute you can find the document with the matter's search function or the search box at the top.
Isolated per firm
Documents are kept in the same isolated environment as your matters: another firm cannot see or request them, even if it were to guess a document's number. See security and professional secrecy.