LawHawk Blog

I like learning about new legal technologies, and how they can help me, but like most people I can still struggle to find time to try them all out.

A good example is digital signatures.  I’ve known about them for years, and always thought they will eventually be the way that we sign all our documents, but haven’t made the time to look into it and why I should use it now.  However a couple of weeks ago Mike Eyal from Secured Signing and I caught up again after first meeting at the LawFest Conference in May.  Secured Signing are another New Zealand based legal technology company, established in 2010 with a number of satisfied customers.

Mike showed me how the Secured Signing system works, and I could tell it was a natural fit for our document automation system and something I wanted to start using.  We have now built a Secured Signing integration which we can drop into any of our automated document templates so that users can automatically create Secured Signing “Smart Tags”.  These are very simple pieces of formatted text that the Secured Signing system can recognise and act on to manage the digital signing process.

It was incredibly interesting, informative and inspirational to get the views of Geordie Johnson and Milan Gandhi. 

If you have read Parts One and Two, you’ll know that: (i) Geordie is the students / young lawyers (NZLSA) representative on the New Zealand Council of Legal Education; and also graduate at Russell McVeagh) and (ii) Milan Gandhi is the founder and director of The Legal Forecast, a “not-for-profit run by early-career professionals who are passionate about disruptive thinking and access to justice”; and also research clerk at McCullough Robertson. 

Is it possible to summarise and add my two cents?  I’ll give it a go:

Last week, Geordie Johnson (students / young lawyers (NZLSA) representative on the New Zealand Council of Legal Education; and also graduate at Russell McVeagh) shared his views on what matters to students and graduates when choosing where to work.  This week, we hear from Milan Gandhi (founder and director of the Legal Forecast, a “not-for-profit run by early-career professionals who are passionate about disruptive thinking and access to justice”; and also research clerk at McCullough Robertson).  The Legal Forecast is hosting a Disrupting Law event in August. which looks like a great initiative! I can't recall seeing anything like this in "my day", so things are clearly changing!

Crap – I’ve just realised I’m no longer a young-buck.  Gene has asked me to look at something, because I’m “closer to the young people than [he is]”.  “Closer to”?!  Here I was, assuming I belonged to the youngest generation of lawyers (millennials), when gen Z is now coming through and making their mark on the profession.  

What are these young lawyers looking for when deciding where to work?

In my last blog, I discussed how suppliers to in-house lawyers must understand the needs of in-house lawyers, before being able to effectively help them.  Over two days and three evenings at ILANZ 2017, I realised that this requirement to understand is ongoing.  New Zealand in-house lawyers are an evolving bunch who continue to learn themselves.  So what did I take away?

At the conclusion of New Zealand legal technology conference LawFest, one attendee said to me that a lot of the legal tech offerings seem to be targeted at private practice lawyers and there is a lack of understanding of the different needs of in-house lawyers.  Does he have a point? 

You may have seen me talk about using legaltech to achieve great outcomes.  You may have nodded your head in agreement. After all, who wouldn’t agree that getting a great result is, well, great?  But what does this actually mean?  

There are a lot of legaltech options out there.  If you’ve tried one piece of legaltech, and been left feeling like the guy on the right, you’re not alone.  This happens all too often.  With so many providers (sometimes appearing to offer the same solution), you have to find one that can solve problems you have, in the way that suits you, in the way they said they would.  Don’t part with your money or your time, until you know this will be the case.

Just under a year ago when I launched LawHawk, in an interview with LawTalk I said that “Document automation will be the way lawyers work – the key is how you will do it.” 

I also said “I know people have been saying ‘change is coming’ for years without it happening, but this time it really is.”

“Yeah right!” a lot of lawyers would have said. 

But things really are changing quickly in this space, and you can see this in the exhibitors at LawFest, New Zealand’s leading legal technology conference. This year there will be three specialist document automation solutions that I am aware of, none of which were available in New Zealand this time last year.  Automation of legal documents is becoming mainstream. It is happening, even if you cannot see it, as this example demonstrates. 

A month ago LawHawk and Succeed Legal released a free will that anyone in New Zealand can use.  You can read more about this in this earlier post: Half of Kiwis over 18 don't have a will - what are we going to do about it?

We decided we would run the free will as a trial through to 30 April to begin with, as we wanted to be sure that it would work well in practice, and there weren’t any issues we hadn’t foreseen.  Well, a month in we are very happy with how it has gone and have decided to keep it going.

In this blog, I look at what our objectives were and the extent to which they were achieved.  In particular, I look at the current and future role of lawyers in relation to drafting and advising on wills and how that could change when the drafting has been automated.

“Not surprisingly (in hindsight, at least), his first initiative was to implement document automation.  This was almost eight years ago!”

Over half a year on from leaving London, I ask myself:  what did I learn from my time in London?  Perhaps I can best answer this question by first asking myself: what did I expect?  Global market-leading bank, hundreds of years old, based in London - everything must go faster and run more efficiently than in little New Zealand, right?  Well, sort of.