LawHawk Blog

We’ve been big fans of digital signing for more than 7 years, starting to use and recommend it after we got to know the team at Secured Signing in 2017. I wrote a blog about it at the time: Digital signing for lawyers – Secured Signing and LawHawk Join Forces.

In 2020, when COVID hit, lawyers were suddenly challenged to work out how to sign documents electronically, and I was asked to participate in a webinar for the New Zealand Law Society on short notice. I believe more than 3,500 lawyers attended the webinar (by far my largest audience on a webinar!). We demonstrated a Secured Signing digital signing workflow, and I involved my 10 year old daughter to show how simple it was. I mustn’t have done a very good job, as people commented that they thought it looked too hard for lawyers to learn, and I don’t believe there was any major uptake. Many lawyers instead watched each other sign documents with pen and paper via video call and swapped counterparts later.

Things are changing, though.

Topics: Future of Law, Legal Technology, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Legal Operations, Law Firm Strategy

One of the things we regularly see legal teams grapple with is when to put their legal automation solution into live use.

Having done the hard yards of reviewing and refining their documents and the process, having it automated to a high standard, and having done a fair amount of testing within the legal team and with some key users, there is often a feeling that still more needs to be done before setting it live.

I’d encourage you to consider the benefits of putting it live earlier.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Self-Service Legal Automation, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management

Like many involved in legal automation, we initially started with a focus on document automation.

This was the particular pain point we had experienced as banking and corporate lawyers ourselves, and we were looking for a way to draft complex legal documents much more quickly and with fewer errors.

When we set up LawHawk eight years ago, there weren’t many options for broader workflow automation, so most initial projects were limited to document automation. Even so, it was common for our projects to deliver 75% or more time savings when drafting individual documents, and potentially much more when delivering packages of documents. This could often translate to several hours of time savings for drafters per matter.

Topics: Future of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Self-Service Legal Automation, Legal Automation, Legal Operations

One of the most interesting things I got from the recent World Commerce & Contracting Summit in Sydney was the report and session run by Dr Sara Cullen of Cullen Group on my Contract Management Style profile. If you haven't done one before, I recommend it.

My results are above, showing how I compare to the average person.

I wasn't particularly surprised that I scored highly for my focus on the relationship development, problem-solving, entrepreneur and scanner categories. They are all things that we have had to focus on when looking to build and grow a new business that intersects complex legal and compliance workflows with fast-moving technological advances. The need to talk to people, understand their problems, and match them to technologies that can solve them is constant – and what I enjoy.

I did pause to think about my relatively low scores for Organizer and Protector and whether those are things that I need to score more highly on.

Topics: Document Automation, In-House Legal, Digital Signatures, Compliance, Legal Automation, Email Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Knowledge Management

The problem

We often come across people who have some form of existing automation solution in place, but it isn’t meeting their needs and they aren’t sure what to do about it.

They have potentially invested a lot of money already in the existing solution, so there’s a large sunk cost that is in their mind.

Of course, the best thing to do is to ignore sunk costs – what's done is done - and to focus on what is the best decision from here on. Easier said than done, but still necessary!

Reasons

There could be a number of reasons why the existing solution isn’t meeting needs. These could include:

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Legal Automation, Email Management, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Law Firm Strategy, Knowledge Management

I was curious when I saw this question in Deloitte's research in their In-house Insights Report “Trusted navigators in complex and challenging environments” prepared in response to a September 2022 survey of New Zealand's in-house legal community, on what technology systems do you have in place to support efficient/effective legal operations?

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Digital Signatures, Compliance, Legal Automation, Email Management, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Knowledge Management

Legal teams often rely on support from Finance, IT, or Procurement to access new technology and systems.

This is confirmed in the Deloitte In-house Insights Report “Trusted navigators in complex and challenging environments”, prepared in response to the September 2022 survey of New Zealand's in-house legal community, which identified the CFO/COO as the most common decision maker, followed by the CIO/IT Department.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Digital Signatures, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management

Digital signing presents many benefits, effectively resolving numerous issues that typically plague the contracting process. It eliminates the cumbersome tasks of printing, signing, scanning, emailing, and compiling counterparts of documents. With digital signing, the constant need to chase signatories for completion is eliminated.

Once a digital signing process is completed, each party automatically receives a copy of the contract via email and a secure PDF. The encrypted PDF ensures that neither the signatures nor the document’s content can be altered without invalidating its authenticity.

Various solutions provide access to digital signing functionality, each with its own set of features.

Topics: Digital Signatures, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management

I often talk to in-house lawyers who are unhappy with a technology solution they're using and are looking for a replacement.

When digging deeper, it often appears that they are not using it as intended to be used and are overlooking core features, which is a large part of the issue. Without using it properly, I think it's unfair to make judgements about how good it is, and hard to tell what you need in an alternative. 

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Legal Automation, Email Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management

Earlier this month I was at the ILANZ conference. It was an excellent event - the best ILANZ I have been to.

There were several indications that technology for lawyers has matured a lot over the last year.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Digital Signatures, Self-Service Legal Automation, Compliance, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management