I’m really proud that the LawHawk site has now gone live. We are on our way to helping lawyers deliver ‘law at speed’, so legal practice remains satisfying, fun and profitable for lawyers.

LawHawk is about bringing the promise of the digital economy to the legal profession and enabling New Zealand’s mostly small law firms to survive and thrive against digital disrupters and larger competitors. It’s a big challenge, but one we are relishing.

It has also taken a significant amount of work over many months, from a large number of people from Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, Melbourne and Edinburgh to design and build the best online legal documents system we could. I’d like to thank the people at eStaronline and HotDocs in particular for making the e-commerce, document automation and design aspects of the website work, Resolve Technology for setting up safe and secure general IT systems, and marketing agency Concentrate for helping to make sure that people who have the problems we’re trying to fix can find out about us.

Where to from here?

As founder of a new company, I’ve already found that start-up life is essentially a series of sprints as part of a marathon, and while we have achieved a lot in a short period of time, it really is only a beginning. It’s been important to get a product into the market so people can experience it, and give feedback. Much of LawHawk’s future from here will depend on where customers want to take it. Acknowledging that much will change, our key goals at this stage are:

1            Obtain feedback on the existing LawHawk documents

The existing documents on the LawHawk website are not the documents that will be used the most in practice, but they are great examples of how document automation can revolutionise the way that lawyers currently work.

We are currently seeking feedback on these documents and the automation features in them to make sure we understand what we are doing well, and what we need to do better, so that when we roll out a number of new documents, they meet your needs as well as possible.

2            Add many new LawHawk documents

We aim to bring out a number of new documents which will be of more relevance to small and medium sized law firms. Over time, we would like to cover off most of the main documents which lawyers are commonly asked to prepare.

It doesn’t make commercial sense that law firms and in-house teams would attempt to develop and maintain their own versions for many of these forms and precedents, as the cost of re-inventing the wheel outweighs any competitive advantage or benefit to the client.   We would like to create as many documents on the LawHawk site as possible which can be used by anyone in a very flexible way to create a customised document that meets their particular needs.

3            Find partners to collaborate with

As noted in the introduction, LawHawk has been born in a collaborative and agile way, and that will continue. To quickly and cost effectively develop the wide range of documents lawyers commonly prepare, at the standards of quality we insist on, we are very keen to develop relationships with lawyers who would like to work with us.

There are opportunities for lawyers who help in this way to achieve significantly cheaper ongoing use of those documents in automated form, as well as branding on the LawHawk site, within document interviews and on the final LawHawk document, positioning those lawyers as the people to see for additional expert advice.

If you are interested in branding yourself as one of New Zealand’s leading lawyers in a particular area, please get in touch.

4            Help customers automate their own documents

Although the LawHawk documents will be of high quality and suitable for widespread use, we know that many organisations have their own forms and precedents. These have content tailored for the organisation’s particular circumstances and which they would prefer to keep using, even if the documents are slow to prepare and storing them where they are easily found is a challenge.

We are very happy to provide quotes on automating and hosting existing documents. For example, one LawHawk customer has a Master Services Agreement that had more than 500 sections of text which could be controlled by only three questions. That could be hours of time saved per document. Alternatively, if you have a two page document that you use all the time, saving 5-10 minutes every time and using lower cost staff could add up to a lot of hours and cost savings over a year.

Your own documents can be hosted on a private page that only you and those you authorise can see.

Try the LawHawk benefits calculator in relation to some of your documents and see if the results surprise you.

5            To be useful to the law profession in as many ways as possible

The absolute core of LawHawk’s value proposition will always be automated documents. With our ability to draw together practical legal experience, great legal documents, and document automation skills, that is where we can add unique value – the fastest way to prepare great legal documents.

However, we also want to make a positive difference to the profession in other ways. Some examples are through regular blogs and articles on trends and issues affecting the profession and how lawyers might respond, speaking at conferences or other events (please get in touch if you are interested), and through the LawHawk legal directory. I’ll write more about the LawHawk legal directory in a separate post.

Because LawHawk is a very discrete application, that should be able to work consistently with almost any other system or workflow, I’ve already formed a number of relationships with other participants in the legal tech space who see opportunities for collaboration. If you’re interested in how the technology changes around the legal profession could affect you, and how you might make changes to benefit from them, please get in touch. I’m happy to talk about your broader goals, and introduce you to other people who may be able to help.