We’re lawyers and legal technology consultants, so what do we really know about Legal Executives?
We recently attended the biennial Legal Executives Conference, and it further confirmed our thinking: Legal Executives are the backbone of law firms and in-house legal teams.
Many of our day-to-day interactions with our customers are with Legal Executives, as it is them who are doing most of the heavy lifting in areas of wills, EPAs, insolvency, trust administration and probate. It's also Legal Executives who have given us the most detailed and valuable feedback on our solutions as they have been developed and rolled out. Legal Executives are the ones who know how things are actually done and why, and who care enough about the end product to point out the small things that could be improved.
There is a lot of talk about legal technology and its implications for lawyers, but much less about Legal Executives. Yet, as some of the busiest people in the firm, already overloaded, it makes sense for law firms and Legal Executives to be looking at the opportunities to improve the productivity and overall effectiveness of Legal Executives.
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Leaving aside the obvious and significant return on investment a firm will make by improving the way Legal Executives work, Legal Executives deserve to be invested in to make their work lives easier and more enjoyable. They deserve a level of investment which recognises and values their contribution to it, instead of seeing them as dependable workhorses that carry out all the grunt work year after year, in the same way as they always have. No longer are legal executives staying where they always have. From our research and conversations with legal executives after the conference, we’ve noticed a large number of legal executives are now moving firms. How can law firms help Legal Executives to do their work better, which will also help ensure they stay with the firm?
Get the basics right
The first and most important step is to ensure that the foundations are solid. This means:
- Having a modern, fit-for-purpose practice management system and document management system which meets today's requirements. The latest cloud-based systems enable greater productivity and collaboration, and are also designed to integrate with other best-of-breed solutions where gaps exist.
- Ensuring basic Word templates are well set up with robust and easy-to-use styles. As heavy document creators, Legal Executives shouldn't need to be spending time fixing formatting, paragraph numbering and cross-referencing errors.
- Making use of the full functionality the firm is paying for in existing systems. As well as the practice management system and document management system, this includes the Microsoft 365 suite that most firms are already paying for. If you haven't looked up Power Automate before, do check this out to see what simple automated workflows could be quickly enabled to remove manual tasks.
From a solid base, it is possible to look at where the most significant immediate impacts could be in automating more substantial work.
Despite what some uninformed lawyers may assume, to successfully carry out the role of a Legal Executive requires precision and thoughtful execution. Any consideration of technology has to bear that in mind, for it to have any chance of benefitting Legal Executives, instead of burdening them.
EPAs (and Wills)
One obvious opportunity is in enduring powers of attorney. Many firms are still just using basic Word templates with no automation, which makes the process cumbersome, unnecessarily risky, and likely expensive for clients (and, despite all that, loss-leaders for the firm) – particularly if they want both EPAs for a couple. The most widely known automation solutions for EPAs have very limited functionality, are inflexible, and don't create significant additional time savings or quality improvements beyond a basic Word template. By contrast, LawHawk offers an automated EPA solution that can generate both EPA documents at the same time (and also a will, if desired) from a single set of information. Creating a mirror set of documents for the other partner can be done in minutes.
With this type of technology, Legal Executives can deliver high-quality documents much more quickly and profitably. They will have more time to build better relationships with clients and ensure they haven’t missed anything about the client’s situation which, if not addressed appropriately, puts the firm at risk. We also have optional web intake forms that can enable clients to enter the key required information themselves, making the Legal Executive's job even faster. Because EPAs follow a prescribed form, it's a straightforward transition to make because you can quickly check that the output matches requirements (but looks nicer!).
You can see more details of our EPA solutions here.
Probate and administration
Another obvious area for improvement is probate and administration.
In 2023, John Earles wrote:
Rejection rate
The rate of rejection of documents submitted to the probate unit for filing is around 36% to 40%, which is staggering. It does not include those applications that get past the Unit and are then endorsed with a minute of non-grant by the Registrar for a more technical reason. A further 10% can be added to that figure.
The time spent by staff of the unit rejecting documents, often requiring preparation of lengthy memoranda, recording and returning the documents by courier, is substantial. If this time was spent processing applications that are accepted in the first instance, then we would be a far more efficient unit and there would be a much quicker turnaround of grants.
Currently, there are a lot of people who are redoing work for which someone is paying for their time needlessly. This really is a nonsense, and we must aim to do better to be fair to the public who pay fees and who we serve..”
To be fair, this is a highly technical and precise area, and automation of probate and administration documents took us a lot longer than expected to get the important (but fiddly) details right. This is also probably why we haven’t seen anything remotely comparable to the solution we have created for this. With our solution, it's now possible to create accurate probate and administration documents quickly and without needing to resort to copying and pasting from other documents or manual typing, and without that very real fear that it’s going to be a coin-toss whether or not your application will be accepted by the probate unit and/or Registrar.
Again, it's possible to check the outputs against the prescribed forms and current precedents to confirm compliance and start saving time. With these documents, though, because of the vast number of permutations and possible scenarios, we would be surprised if firms have comprehensive precedents that cover every situation in a format that can be easily worked with, which is another reason why using our automated solution makes a lot of sense.
You can see more details of our probate and administration solutions here.
Trust Administration
We've recently worked closely with a Legal Executive in a firm that manages a lot of trusts.
Initially, we looked at how we could use automation to create correspondence that the firm could send to clients asking them to complete details about the trust to draft trustee resolutions. Working together, we quickly identified an opportunity to create a paperless solution that could manage more of the overall workflow.
The Legal Executive has been able to input key trust details that are already known into a database, which can now be easily maintained and kept up to date. Customised emails are sent to each trustee with links to a form, where they can review and accept the firm's terms of engagement, as well as the trust details. They can make updates as needed, digitally sign, and return the form to the firm. Not every client wants to fill in a form, so in some cases the client can just call the Legal Executive and talk through the details, which the Legal Executive can enter. The client can then sign the completed form.
Every step is tracked so it can be reviewed if required, but overall, it's a much simpler way to address the challenging situation of managing simple trusts cost-effectively and to free up a very busy Legal Executive who was otherwise struggling to complete this work.
Contracting Out Agreements, Separation Agreements, Bankruptcy Documents, and Company Liquidation Documents
We have also developed solutions in each of these areas. Each solution is tailored to the requirements of that practice area, and has often been refined further with feedback from Legal Executives and lawyers who work extensively in those areas and are familiar with the key details that need to be precisely right.
You can see more details about these here.
Safety in numbers
As touched on above, across all of our pre-built solutions mentioned so far, we deliberately work with industry leaders to review and test our solutions, to ensure the solutions reflect current law and best practice. More organically, due to the ever-growing number of firms using our solutions, our solutions are continuously improved as and when someone raises an opportunity for improvement (for example, a tweak to cater for an upcoming change of law, or a simpler or more effective way to cover off a legal concept). By using our solutions, Legal Executives and their firms will benefit from these improvements as soon as they are made to the solution.
Summary
We know that Legal Executives are sometimes wary of new technology and change, as too often it's been something that has been done to them, rather than with them, and too often the technology has promised the world and grossly underdelivered.
It doesn't have to be that way. With modern no-code software platforms, it can be surprisingly easy to configure solutions for different firm or individual user preferences. As above, to the extent a requested configuration is something that would benefit all users, then that configuration will be made to the solution for everyone to benefit from.
While Legal Executives don't (usually) get to make the decisions about what technology the firm will adopt, there should be more scope for Legal Executives to influence those decisions, including by recommending solutions that they believe will help them to deliver better value and outcomes for the firm.
People like us are well placed to assist in those discussions by providing examples of how other firms are using similar solutions and the quantifiable financial benefits that are being achieved. Free trials can be easily set up to enable real testing and comparisons against current processes, and pricing can be agreed that makes financial sense. LawHawk’s solutions are generally available with per document/matter pricing and without any minimum volumes or terms. This means the firm only pays for what it actually uses, and those costs can be easily disbursed to the client or recovered within the agreed fee.
But we shouldn't forget that the most important likely benefit will be a greater sense of happiness, as work-life balance improves, and Legal Executives can assume even more valuable areas of work within the firm to manage over the long term.
Want to see how these ideas could apply in your day-to-day work? Get in touch — we’re always up for a practical conversation about making legal work easier.