Women’s Legal Service Queensland (WLSQ) helps women and children with domestic violence and family law. The small team of lawyers, social workers, and 140 volunteers provide free legal advice and welfare help to Queensland women and their children who experience domestic violence. The service is inundated with requests for help from women who have suffered domestic violence or who need information regarding child protection, child support, and other complex family law matters. WLSQ helps more than 3,700 women annually.
As well as free legal advice, WLSQ provides vital resources to help women on their journey through the legal system.
“The machines are ideal for a law practice because they include security features like PDF encryption, the need to enter a PIN to collect printouts, and copy security, which prevents unauthorised copying.”
- Natalie Davidson, Fundraising Manager, WLSQ
The paper-intensive nature of legal matters, and the number of women WLSQ helps every day, mean the organisation prints, photocopies, and scans thousands of documents every week. Yet until two years ago, the service only had one, ageing photocopier that jammed, and was unreliable.
Natalie Davidson, Fundraising Manager, WLSQ, said, “Women often arrive at the centre with a suitcase full of paperwork from ongoing matters. To help them, our lawyers need copies of everything relevant. Sometimes they need to copy evidence, and in many cases, the original documents aren’t in perfect condition, so it’s essential to be able to make photocopies and scans that are as clear and readable as possible. And of course, we needed a machine that was reliable and could handle the volume of work we required.”
As a not-for-profit organisation, WLSQ couldn’t afford to replace the old photocopier.
Natalie Davidson said, “Having a reliable printing and copying system is absolutely vital. We lost a lot of time because we were using an unreliable printer. We would often have to find alternative ways to print documents, such as going to local office supplies retailers and paying to use their equipment. We didn’t let it affect cases, but it made things harder than they needed to be.”
Natalie Davidson met Dr David Cooke, chairman and managing director of Konica Minolta Australia, at a fundraising conference and took the opportunity to speak with him about WLSQ.
Natalie Davidson said, “We kept in touch after the event and Konica Minolta offered to provide us with two multifunction devices and managed print services at no cost. It was a very generous, unprompted offer and it has made an incredible amount of difference to the services that we can offer.”
Konica Minolta supplied WLSQ with two bizhub C452 multifunction devices, replacing the organisation’s single, ageing machine. The company also provides managed print services, which includes all machine maintenance, toner, and other consumables, and removes the burden of device management from WLSQ.
The new multifunction devices let WLSQ print and copy reliably without needing someone to constantly monitor the machine and unblock paper jams. This saves a significant amount of time, making the service more productive.
The devices offer superior uptime and reliability, minimising maintenance requirements and keeping WLSQ productive. They also offer unparalleled output quality of up to 1800 dpi equivalent x 600 dpi resolution. The standard paper capacity of up to 3,650 sheets means the devices don’t need to be refilled as often, and efficiency is guaranteed with 45 pages per minute colour print output, up to 78 scanned A4 originals per minute, and rapid first-copy-out times of less than 4.8 seconds.
Natalie Davidson said, “The machines are ideal for a law practice because they include security features like PDF encryption, the need to enter a PIN to collect printouts, and copy security, which prevents unauthorised copying.”
Konica Minolta provides all of WLSQ’s printing at no charge, effectively removing what had been a massive line item from the organisation’s accounts.
Natalie Davidson said, “Eliminating such a huge overhead has had an enormous benefit to the people we help. Because we’re not paying for printing, we can put that money directly into helping more women. Demand for our services has increased by 40 per cent this year alone. We help thousands but there are always thousands more that we can’t help because we just don’t have the resources.
“You wouldn’t think something as fundamental as a multifunction device could make such a difference, but Konica Minolta has had a positive impact on many lives through its support for us; they are helping us to help others, and we are very grateful.
“Over the past two years, we’ve developed a great relationship with Konica Minolta. The team treats WLSQ like a valued customer rather than an organisation to which Konica Minolta has donated. If we need the team to service or fix a machine, the response is incredibly fast and professional. WLSQ’s office environment can be intimidating with lots of security and locked doors. The Konica Minolta staff are always sensitive and genuinely caring.