It’s been a year since I joined LawHawk, and it still feels so fresh and exciting.  It’s probably a bit naïve / premature to reflect so soon, but heck, I’m on holiday!  The Sydney sun, sea and sand has given me a great opportunity to stop, and think. 

So what's happened?!

The year that’s been

When I joined LawHawk, in my very first blog, I spoke about the opportunities to change the way organisations work in a positive and meaningful way.  I wanted to close the gap between what clients expect from their lawyers and what the lawyers can deliver. 

One year on, I’m happy to say we’ve taken some of those opportunities. 

In a recent blog on growth, I referred to one of our law firm customers, who won a significant new client – their “secret weapon” was a document automated by LawHawk.  This example wasn’t a one-off, and we’re regularly asked to work with law firms to better serve their clients (both existing and prospective).

Right now, we’re putting the finishing touches on automating a suite of construction contracts for a customer, to relieve some of the pressure on their in-house legal team.  We’re making it much faster for them to generate the more complex documents (for one 3910 contract, reducing the time from four hours to one), and we’re also setting up their business units to quickly and safely generate the most low-risk (but high volume) document themselves. 

In both of the examples above, we’re helping both our customer, and our customer’s customers.  It’s this win/win scenario that makes the most sense to me, and is the most rewarding to be part of. 

I love these custom jobs.  Once we understand an organisation’s goals and what’s stopping them from reaching them, it’s incredibly satisfying to build something to solve those issues, and see them use it regularly because it works well.

If you’d like to see some other examples of what we've been working on, check out our “recent work” section on this page.

Biggest challenge?

The most challenging part, for me, has been recognising that my career is not 100% controlled by my standard of work and the effort I put into it.  Gone are the days of knowing that career success directly correlates to producing top quality work and working hard for people who already know what I do, and how I can help them.  I guess this relative uncertainty is a natural consequence of working in a startup, especially one that is bringing a relatively new concept to the market.  With the benefit of hindsight, it was never going to be easy, when we’re still viewed as a “threat” or “the enemy” by many of the people we are trying to help!

While our customers get real value from the documents that we automate (this part, we can control), we can’t control who gives us the chance to show our worth.  It’s been a challenge (but ultimately character building) to keep positive, and believe in what we’re offering even more, in the face of potential customers who don’t see the need, or aren’t yet ready, to work with us. 

On the flipside, it’s been incredibly energising and rewarding to work with customers who want to make a meaningful difference to how their teams, and their customers, work.  It’s why I joined LawHawk, so I feel we’ve already achieved something pretty special.

What’s next?

With so much going on each day, it’s often difficult to look too far into the distance.  However, for me, in 2018, I’d like to ensure our existing customers continue to feel they are receiving great value from us.  While there can be massive upside and competitive advantage in being first, I appreciate that, by definition, first can be associated with a higher degree of risk.  I want to make sure we reward our early adopters.   The deeper automation we are starting to do for our existing customers, covering more of the end-to-end processes we have made initial starts on, should ensure that our customers will receive significant benefits for years to come.  Working smart will be their norm.

In saying that, I’d also like to bring the benefits of advanced document automation to more people.  While this blog isn’t the time or place to set out our roadmap for 2018, it’s fair to say we’ve got a lot of ideas for how our offerings and team might evolve and expand, and I’m excited about the direction LawHawk is heading! 

Thanks!

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone that has helped us so far.  I definitely get that everyone has a lot going on and, while LawHawk’s success is central to my life, it barely registers for others.  For those of you who have taken some time to test our documents, provided feedback on our documents (it’s not too late!), introduced us to potential customers, and been a sounding board for all things new business, it’s massively appreciated!

If you’d like us to automate something you didn’t think could be automated, email us with the relevant documents.  We’ll let you know, for free, what can (or can’t) be done.  Like other customers, you might be pleasantly surprised!