LawHawk Blog

We talk to a lot of organisations about document automation.  Many of them have problems that document automation can help with.  Some of them are literally drowning in paperwork, lacking sufficient experienced staff, and know they are exposed to undesirable levels of risk through inadvertent error or lost opportunities through delay.  The people on the front-line need a solution now!

Although it is something that they want to start using because they know the benefits it will provide them in terms of greater speed and quality of document creation, with reduced costs and risk of error, many of them already have some type of system that already has, or could have as an extra module, some sort of document generation capability which they are not using.  In a corporate context this could be a procurement system or an HR system, and in a law firm, it is often the firm’s practice management system.

Sensibly they want to look into that option further before they make a decision on how they will start to use document automation.  The problem is that we see a lot of people go into that process, but few come out the other side.  Months or years will pass without getting any of the benefits they know they need.  How can this problem be avoided?

If you are considering these types of issues, the following questions and thoughts based on our observations might help you and your team move through evaluation more quickly and effectively and avoid it becoming a black hole that devours your initiative before you get going:

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.

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.

As I noted in my earlier blog (Half of Kiwis over 18 don’t have a will – what are we going to do about it?), a lot of New Zealanders don't have wills.  It's not really clear why that is, but one reason is that a lot of people think they haven't got enough assets to make it worthwhile.

With the growth of KiwiSaver balances, that is often not the case.  Average KiwiSaver balances are now approaching $15,000, which is the threshold for administration of an estate without a will.  Above that figure, and the family has to go to court to have someone appointed as the administrator.  Stuff recently drew attention to this issue, and also to the free will that we recently launched with Matt Hay.

You see see the Stuff story here, or read it in full below. You can try the free will here.

“It’s those with the most experience that can contribute the most knowledge to new technologies.”  

There’s been a lot of press in New Zealand recently about the growing division between the baby boomers and millennials/gen Y.  For example, Bill English has said the age of eligibility for superannuation will rise to 67 from 2037 (i.e. it won’t directly affect the baby boomers).  For a few years now, the house prices in the most popular areas of NZ have been out of reach of most millennials.  This blog isn’t intended to discuss the economic and social arguments behind these situations we find ourselves in.  I am, however, interested in how the stereotypical differences in mindsets between the generations can make innovation tricky within organisations.  How do we get the best outcomes, in light of these differences?