LawHawk Blog

I'm really excited that Allen Li has joined LawHawk, starting 14 November. Allen has most recently been working as a derivatives lawyer in London for a global bank, and experiencing first hand the global trend toward automation and its significant benefits. Before that we worked together at Buddle Findlay so I knew what a great asset he would be for LawHawk and its customers when he came back to New Zealand. 

I recently wrote an ebook on technology, and how it can help lawyers be more successful, after speaking at a conference and finding there was real interest in the topic.  Covering more than 50 different technologies, it has been downloaded many times, but the Law Society was also interested in adapting it into an article for LawTalk, which they have now done.

You can read the LawTalk article here, and it is also set out in full below.  The full ebook (which contains some more detailed information, a number of graphics, and more hyperlinks to the various suppliers) is also still available for download here: http://info.lawhawk.nz/tech-and-disruption-ebook.

My earlier post (Senior associates: 10 ideas for taking more control of your career) struck a chord with a number of people, with the number of shares and comments I received confirming that there definitely is an issue with Senior Associates (and senior in-house lawyers too), and a desire to do something about it. Interestingly, a number of Senior Associates also told me they would have liked to have shared it, but were concerned about how their Partners would have reacted. Food for thought on how those relationships are going... 

While my core message for Senior Associates was to take control of their own lives, they can’t do it alone and depending on where their mind is at, how confident they are, and their history with the firm, they might not make a start by themselves. However, they might if their supervisor or someone else who is looking out for them gives them a nudge and a few tips on where to start.

So I wanted to provide some tips for Partners and Directors of law firms who know a Senior Associate who has more potential than they have been using and who they would like to help kick on. You don’t have to be a direct supervisor – in fact, it might work even better if you are not, or if two or more people are involved as mentors. This framework can also work for less senior team members too, but I think it should work really well for Senior Associates, who have greater ability to take individual action.

I really like the framework outlined below, even more because it's come from someone who really knows his stuff, and is being used in real life at ASB Bank.

As I've written about before, purpose and meaning are big things for me in gaining and maintaining motivation, and it's increasingly important to younger lawyers coming into the profession.

LawTalk recently published an article I wrote on this containing six recommendations for how you and your team can find meaning and satisfaction.  You can read it here, and the full text is also set out below.

A recent piece of research shows that senior associates really are an unhappy bunch of lawyers. This recent story showed that 40% of them in the United Kingdom even regret having become a lawyer in the first place. Given that senior associates are the best of those remaining after the REALLY unhappy ones have already moved in-house or left the law entirely, that’s a disturbingly high percentage!

It has also been my own experience that senior associates are the least happy group in a law firm, scoring significantly lower in staff satisfaction surveys.

This post looks at some possible reasons for this and offers some suggestions.

I recent had the opportunity to talk with Tao Lin from Stuff about the changes that are happening in the legal profession, and how they can benefit small businesses here in New Zealand.  She has published a story  "LawHawk spreads wings with online legal templates" which you can view in full here.

It's great to see the continued interest in LawHawk as we continue to spread the word about automated online legal documents in general, and what we are doing at LawHawk in particular.  It's also good to see recognition of the great work that Simmonds Stewart have done in making quality legal documents more available - in New Zealand, and now in Asia.  Andrew Simmonds and his team have led the way in seeing the issue of availability and doing something significant about it.

As Andrew and Katherine Beck both note, the real opportunity is not to replace the relationship between clients and lawyers, but to create opportunities for a better relationship.  More informed clients, working with efficient lawyers who can do work for them a lot more cheaply - and still make a good profit.

You can read the full story below.

I found this recent blog by Robert Ambrogi fascinating: More Exclusive Survey Results: Few Small Firms Implementing New Technology. In it he reviews findings of a new survey of small-solo law firm management in the United Stated conducted by Thomson Reuters Solo and Small Law Firm group, to which he has been given exclusive access. The survey covered firms of 1-29 lawyers, which would be the size of most law firms in New Zealand (85% of which have 5 or fewer lawyers).

The results showed that two-thirds of firms will implement no changes in technology for at least a two-year span. Supporting this, only a quarter of small firms say they will spend more on technology and infrastructure, while 72% say their spend will remain the same, and 4% say they will spend less. More optimistically, this could indicate that it is increasingly becoming possible to access great technology, via the cloud, much more cheaply than used to be the case, but I don’t think that is what they meant!

Document automation (sometimes referred to as document assembly) is a way to create electronic documents using computer systems and workflows, instead of the traditional way of manually working through a document, finding areas to be customised, and typing or deleting relevant details.

At its simplest, document automation can include capture and automatic entry of items like party names and dates. Those who have used it in this way often believe that is all it can be used for.

However, modern document automation technology now allows for far more advanced uses, controlling hundreds or thousands of sections of optional text to create highly customised documents in just a few minutes. In this way it allows users to: 

Do you or your team draft or review confidentiality agreements? For something so simple, there’s actually a lot to think about, including things like:

•     Who are the parties, and who should the parties be?

•     What other people are entitled to access confidential information, and on what basis?

•     What’s in the definition of confidential information?

•     What’s out of the definition of confidential information?

•     What purpose can the confidential information be used for?

•     How should the confidential information be kept secure?

•     What should happen if some confidential information is required to be disclosed?

•     Should confidential information be returned or destroyed, and when should it be allowed to be retained?

We’ve created a free guide to confidentiality agreements, which you can access below. It can help you if you’re drafting your own confidentiality agreement, or as a checklist when reviewing one prepared by someone else.

Feel free to share this with your friends, and let us know what you think – what’s missing? Anything you don’t agree with?