We have set up a number of trials of our document automation solutions. Some have gone really well, while others have never got off the ground. Many fall somewhere in between and could have definitely gone better than they did.
Having thought hard about how to set trials up for the best outcomes, here are six practical suggestions.
1 Start with a clear idea of the problem or opportunity, and what you hope the trial will confirm
Everyone is busy, so nobody has time to poke around and see what something does and if it could be useful for something. You should have a goal in mind.
It might be something simple, where you just want to see if the new solution can address a current pain point, such as a less clunky way to generate enduring power of attorney documents. If you do enough of them, that may be sufficient in itself.
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However, ideally, you will have a deeper level of understanding, which will help to identify why it is important to carry out the trial compared to what else you might be doing.
For example, it may take you a couple of hours to prepare mirror sets of enduring power-of-attorney documents, and it’s currently seen as an unprofitable area of work, which you would not want to market and grow, because of those challenges.
You may have a hypothesis that you could generate mirror sets of those documents in as little as 20 minutes once you have all the information, and that if you could do so, you could actually handle a lot more matters on a much more profitable basis, without having to add significant additional staff costs. Knowing your local area, you may feel that you could easily add another couple of instructions per week, which would amount to around another 100 matters per year. You could then quantify what that would look like in terms of additional fees and profitability.
In that case, I suspect you would have a different approach to how you approach the trial, what you are looking for, and how you prioritise testing different scenarios to see if it can really deliver the outcomes that you hope for.
2 Communicate, communicate, communicate
The second step is to communicate the problems or opportunities and the priority to the rest of the team.
It’s very common when we set up a trial that many of the people who have been added will not even log in.
They will have reasons for that, which could be that they really are flat out. Or it could be that they don’t understand the potential importance of the solution and how it could help them and the firm. Quite possibly, they are even fearful that if the solution does work really well, it may have negative implications for them.
You must communicate with the broader team and get everyone on board.
3 Set a short time frame
It is helpful to set a timeframe by which everybody will have completed their testing and will be able to share their feedback.
It could be a good idea to set up an internal meeting where all users come together and share their experiences.
This might help ensure that everybody completes their trial, but also that if some people have different and less favourable results than others, these can be discussed and perhaps the underlying causes identified. The team can converge around how they would use the solution consistently to get the best outcomes.
Setting a shorter period allows for momentum to build and ensures that new skills and concepts aren’t forgotten between tests.
4 Include the supplier wherever needed
Feel free to involve the supplier at any time.
Suppliers obviously want to ensure that everybody gets the best possible experience from the trial that they can, and if somebody needs a bit of extra help, that’s understandable, and something that they would want to be able to assist with.
Only hearing that people have missed a key feature that would’ve helped them a lot after the trial makes for lost opportunities.
5 Test with realistic scenarios
When testing, try to use realistic scenarios.
Sometimes, people share the information they entered and the documents they have generated, but it is all made up of random letters and options that don’t make any sense. This makes testing difficult, if not impossible.
One of the benefits of an advanced document automation solution is that it can handle levels of complexity that are not achievable with more basic tools. However, you will never be able to assess that if you can’t remember what you put into the questionnaire, and what you would ideally expect to see in the outputted documents.
For something like enduring powers of attorney, it would be possible to use the tool on an actual live matter, because the output needs to correspond to the prescribed forms under the legislation, and so you could kill two birds with one stone. Ideally, don’t leave it until Friday afternoon when it is urgent to do this, though, as when you are under genuine time pressure and you can’t work out how to do something for the first time, frustration can rise rapidly.
Perhaps a better approach would be to refer to a recent matter where you already have all the necessary information, and use that as a test case. This way, you can compare how long it takes to generate documents with the new system against the actual time spent on the matter. You can then also compare the outputs to check that they are at least as good or better.
6 Understand that anything new requires some effort
Lastly, it is essential to be realistic that undertaking anything new will always involve a learning curve, and it will take time to learn how the new system works.
We incorporate a lot of questions and guidance into our solutions, which are designed to help people understand how they work, why they might choose one option over others, and what will happen if they choose each option. We have deliberately chosen not to maximise time savings so we can increase quality and reduce risk. We hope this is helpful, but it does mean that there is extra text to read the first time, which you probably won’t need to focus on as much, or at all, as you become more familiar with the tool.
Accordingly, if you are looking for how much time a solution will save, you may find that it doesn’t initially save much time. However, if you allow enough time for your testing, you may find that even by your second or third attempt, things are much quicker.
The video below shows how quickly I was able to prepare an example mirror set of enduring power of attorney documents where I had all the information needed (around 10 minutes), but even if you took 3x longer than that, after a period of learning, it would likely still result in significant time savings and high quality outputs.
Conducting additional testing also enables you to observe the range of circumstances that the solution can accommodate and assess longer-term suitability.
Additionally, consider other benefits, such as reduced review time, shorter time to make changes, increased ability to delegate tasks, and fewer errors. All of these will compound for greater total benefits, but may not be as obvious to a single user.
Learning a new system for legal work will obviously involve some degree of complexity, as people typically come to law firms for tasks that require more complexity than they can handle on their own. This will be increasingly the case as technology becomes more available to clients directly.
Consider a simpler change, such as getting a new keyboard and learning a new finger positioning so you don’t constantly make typos, or even just switching the hand you wear your watch on. When you consider how uncomfortable they feel until you adjust, you can get a sense of how realistically it will take a little while for the new legal system to become familiar and comfortable.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these tips will be helpful suggestions for the next time you try out any new technology. It’s possible that the technology you trial may not be the right solution for you, or the best one. And that’s fine. As long as you have given it a good attempt, I’m sure you will find it has been a helpful exercise because you will have a better appreciation of what that system can do, and what it can’t.
Where there are any gaps, the trial will help you identify which alternative solution may be a better fit for your needs. And if the solution does do what you need, you will be well placed to move quickly from trialling to successful adoption, and start to gather the benefits that you hypothesised at the outset and can now plan to achieve.
For more suggestions on practical ways to do more with less download our free guide Tech for Small Law Firms: Practical Solutions on a Budget. This guide shows how smaller law firms can make practical technological improvements on a budget that makes sense.
