This is jurisdiction-dependent.

I work for a very large company with three dozen law offices across the US. Listening to what is considered "normal" in other offices is always interesting. I am, unfortunately, in an office that practices in courts that are paper-dependent, even though there are rules that allow for electronic filing and service in many circumstances, all it takes is one litigant (or the judge!) to say "eh, I'm not comfortable with this, we're going to do this the old fashioned way" and we're done.

I recently went through dealing with some standard legal agreements for a film project. I never met our lawyer in person, it was all telephone and email.

But when it came to signing documents, that had to be done on paper. And notarized, which was a simple trip to the UPS store. And the originals mailed around, which was a hassle. The parties involved don't even all live in the same hemisphere, so there were some annoying shipping times.

I think at bigger firms ( the kind that can actually afford in house IT) they have runners, paralegals, various secretaries and assistants of sorts, etc to deal with that. Lawyers and IT types don't deal with mountains of paperwork. I do know of a solo practitioner who deals with tons and tons (literally) of paperwork. I have a feeling people are projecting their big(ish) law experiences on the profession as a whole.

In some courts there is a requirement to both file an electronic copy on the docket and provide paper courtesy copies to the Judge's chambers. Some things are easier to work with when they are printed, and the courts put the onus to provide paper copies on the litigants.

While it is very common to bring printed docs to court, it was probably the last step of the process where he printed everything. Everything before that was probably electronic and even if he received printed docs, those would be scanned and OCR'ed.

This really is jurisdiction dependent. At larger law firms that have to deal with paper courts still have runners that handle the docket and other details of filing (assuming the court allows it). At small firms this is the lawyer's responsibility.

No, it's the courts that still require documents to be submitted in hard-copy. Update: rapidlegal.com is one such service.

Law firms may be electronic, but sadly some courts are not.