At the risk of over-disclosure, over the past 6 weeks, I have lost quite a lot of weight.
Despite being fairly active last year, I couldn’t shift the additional weight I’d picked up. No matter how much I ran, I couldn’t lose the weight.
Towards the end of last year, I bought a new suit in a larger size because my old suit no longer fit me and I couldn't see a way back to it. I just assumed that my metabolism had slowed down, and this was the new reality.
However, over Christmas, our son told us how he had slimmed down while building his strength using the MyFitnessPal app. Tell me more I said…
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Topics:
Document Automation,
Legal Technology,
In-House Legal,
Law Firm Management,
Legal Automation,
Matter Management,
Legal Operations,
Law Firm Strategy,
Law Firm Profitability
The 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey contains some fascinating findings after surveying 772 participants across 20 industries and 48 countries. There is room for optimism, but a number of apparent inconsistencies and perhaps overall pointers to many legal teams repeating the same mistakes and getting similar outcomes for 2025.
Some of the key findings and my comments on them are set out below.
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Topics:
Document Automation,
Legal Technology,
In-House Legal,
Self-Service Legal Automation,
Compliance,
Legal Automation,
Matter Management,
Legal Operations,
Contract Management,
Productivity
Like many involved in legal automation, we initially started with a focus on document automation.
This was the particular pain point we had experienced as banking and corporate lawyers ourselves, and we were looking for a way to draft complex legal documents much more quickly and with fewer errors.
When we set up LawHawk eight years ago, there weren’t many options for broader workflow automation, so most initial projects were limited to document automation. Even so, it was common for our projects to deliver 75% or more time savings when drafting individual documents, and potentially much more when delivering packages of documents. This could often translate to several hours of time savings for drafters per matter.
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Topics:
Future of Law,
Document Automation,
Legal Technology,
In-House Legal,
Law Firm Management,
Digital Signatures,
Self-Service Legal Automation,
Legal Automation,
Legal Operations
If you are an ActionStep customer or are considering ActionStep as an option to replace your legacy practice management system, you will likely be very interested in a number of new options that are available for ActionStep customers to create the type of complex legal documents that law firms are going to need to be able to create in an era when anyone will be able to access some form of AI to create documents. Differentiation in this area will be increasingly valuable.
The ability to create more complex legal documents has been a key gap in most practice management systems we have looked at. While most practice management system providers market their solutions as having document automation, it falls far short of what we know is possible with specialist tools. Being able to merge names, addresses, and dates is not advanced document automation!
We can see that ActionStep now has at least three good new options, which should be a strong differentiating factor for firms considering a switch. Even if you’ve looked at ActionStep before and it wasn’t the right fit at that time, it may be time for a fresh look.
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Topics:
Document Automation,
Legal Technology,
Document Assembly,
Law Firm Management,
HotDocs Advance,
Legal Automation,
Matter Management,
Law Firm Strategy,
Law Firm Profitability,
HotDocs,
NetDocuments,
ActionStep,
PatternBuilder
One of the most interesting things I got from the recent World Commerce & Contracting Summit in Sydney was the report and session run by Dr Sara Cullen of Cullen Group on my Contract Management Style profile. If you haven't done one before, I recommend it.
My results are above, showing how I compare to the average person.
I wasn't particularly surprised that I scored highly for my focus on the relationship development, problem-solving, entrepreneur and scanner categories. They are all things that we have had to focus on when looking to build and grow a new business that intersects complex legal and compliance workflows with fast-moving technological advances. The need to talk to people, understand their problems, and match them to technologies that can solve them is constant – and what I enjoy.
I did pause to think about my relatively low scores for Organizer and Protector and whether those are things that I need to score more highly on.
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Topics:
Document Automation,
In-House Legal,
Digital Signatures,
Compliance,
Legal Automation,
Email Management,
Legal Operations,
Contract Management,
Knowledge Management
Although HotDocs Advance has been out for around five years, I know many organisations have not yet migrated across from HotDocs Classic.
There are many reasons for this, including:
- not understanding HotDocs Advance's full potential to go further than Classic and create more valuable solutions. With the world's most powerful document automation solution, you can do better-quality work much faster. You can support more clients without the cost of adding more staff, and you can charge higher fees for less time.
- Accessing HotDocs Classic via an integration such as ActionStep, where an integration with HotDocs Advance has not, until recently, been easily available.
However, from what I have observed, many more practical issues hold firms back. I summarise these and options for dealing with them below. For firms that are using ActionStep and who would like to integrate with HotDocs Advance, I share an exciting update on that below as well.
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Topics:
Document Automation,
HotDocs Advance
The best conversations I have with law firms tend to have little to do with technology, as there are more fundamental things that need discussion first.
Technology can be a great enabler, but only if it aligns with the law firm's business model, and how the firm creates and captures value.
That’s why I'm always keen to understand what a firm does and how it charges for its services. If they are still charging by the hour, it will make little sense for them to invest in the type of solutions we specialise in delivering, which aim to remove as many hours of time from the job as possible.
If the firm's costs (mainly premises and staff) are largely fixed and they don't have a marketing strategy to get more clients for their distinctive solutions, there's a high chance with an hourly rate billing model that they could end up doing the same amount of work, for the same clients, faster and for less money! Why would the firm want or pay for automation?
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Topics:
Practise of Law,
Future of Law,
Legal Technology,
Law Firm Management,
Legal Automation,
Legal Operations,
Law Firm Marketing,
Law Firm Strategy,
Law Firm Profitability,
Law Firm Pricing
021 339 527
lawhawk@lawhawk.nz
