LawHawk Blog

Great to chat with Giles Beckford of Radio New Zealand's Business News  recently about the opportunities legal document automation creates for New Zealand's predominantly smaller legal practices.

You can listen to the interview here:

A transcript of the interview is set out below:

Is your firm one of “a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.” (Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordström, Funky Business).

One of the key challenges any law firm (and any business in general) faces is working out where to play. There are a number of approaches.

Last week, I wrote about the opportunity to create substantial savings for banks and their customers through use of common documents. Advantages would include:

• reducing the substantial costs banks incur in preparing the documents;

• reducing the costs of updating and maintaining them, and increasing the number of people with incentives to continuously  improve them;

• making it much faster, easier and cheaper for lawyers to advise clients on the terms of loan and security documents – meaning borrowers can access their money quicker, and with lower costs; and

The article below on how law firms can thrive in disruptive times was published in the latest LawTalk magazine.  You can also read it here.

The inspiration for the article came from a 2 hour session with Gary Bolles.  While there are some excellent legal training courses offered through NZLS, ADLS and others, given the vast range of new skills that lawyers can and should develop, it's worth looking more broadly as there are some great courses at very good value.  For example, 2 hours with Gary Bolles, which was organised by Biz Dojo's Collider Programme and Callaghan Innovation, was only $25.00. Creative HQ's Startup Garage also offers some excellent events.  Look into them!  

Seven takeaways for lawyers

Despite nearly 20 years working as a banking and finance lawyer, one thing I have never understood is why banks in New Zealand all have their own terms and conditions for security and loan documents. If ever there were documents that were well suited to industry standardisation, they would be it. Consistency of documentation and processes in areas where the banks do not compete – like this - would reduce transaction costs, and free them up to focus on areas where they could innovate and compete.

The recently released FT Asia Pacific Innovative Lawyers 2016 report contains a number of examples of law firms beginning to use technology, including document automation, to improve their businesses. 

Based on the examples cited, it appears that even the largest firms and legal teams are only just starting to scratch the surface of how significantly technology can increase efficiency and free lawyers up to do more interesting and valuable work.

Key technology developments and achievements overall, and particularly those that related to document automation include:

 Last week I focused on how to encourage great people to want to join your team. This week I want to look at 8 things you can do once you’ve hired them.

These include:

- remembering the wider team, not just the lawyers;

- working hard for your team;

- focusing on the individual;

- considering whether you are contributing to any struggles they are having;

- using Hackman & Oldham's Job Characteristics Model as a framework;

- including them in the business, while remembering they care about more than just business; and

- use technology wherever possible to help them do a better job.

The art of coaching is this: all your athletes are highly motivated when they first start, but your job as a coach is to create an environment that inspires them to use that motivation to get better and you do that by having the right balance of stimulation and fun.

Steve Hansen

In my earlier blog LawHawk Takes Flight!, I touched on the free LawHawk legal directory as a particular area where LawHawk sees an opportunity to add value to the legal profession, but which could do with some further explanation. In particular:

- if LawHawk is really for lawyers, why would there even be a legal directory?

- do you have to be regularly using LawHawk to be included in the directory?

- can less experienced lawyers include profiles?

LAWHAWK PRESS RELEASE

THE ‘XERO’ EFFECT HITS NEW ZEALAND’S LEGAL PROFESSION

Legal documentation automation set to transform the legal profession in New Zealand as Xero has for accountants

Wellington, NZ. 7 June 2016. The law profession in New Zealand is set to be shaken up with the launch of a new online service called LawHawk (www.lawhawk.nz), whose cloud-based document automation transforms the speed and cost of producing high quality contracts and other legal documents.