In these earlier posts Time to visit the legal sausage factory - Questions for clients to ask their lawyers in 2017,  The legal sausage factory - will lawyers show clients how they make their sausages? and Technology in the legal sausage factory - what is it, and who does it benefit?  we suggested that if clients want to see improvements in the value they get from their law firms, they need to be more assertive and find out how their law firms currently work.  To do that, they will have to ask some harder questions than they have to date. A similar approach is also suggested by Jacob Herstek, vice president and senior legal counsel at HSBC Bank USA in this article To Cut E-Discovery Costs, Legal Departments Question Outside Counsel.  

We have come up with 13 questions that lawyers could ask their law firms to work out if they are modern and efficient, or are a legal 'sausage factory'.

The first questions we suggested asking have been:

1. Can you show us how you actually work?
2. What technology have you already adopted for our benefit?
3. What technology will you adopt for our benefit?
4. How do you keep our information secure?

Next we suggest you focus on precedents.  Do they even have any?  Do they use them? Is your law firm making its sausages from a recipie or are they just sweeping together whatever they can find on the day to get something out the door?

Last week in Time to visit the legal sausage factory - Questions for clients to ask their lawyers in 2017 I suggested that it was time law firm clients learned more about how their law firms actually work, because:

• it's probably not as good as what the client thinks; and
• the only way that the much needed changes to the legal profession will occur - and which clients say they want - is if clients demand and require it. 

Perhaps a little controversially, I suggested many law firms may be similar to sausage factories - we like the end product, but we wouldn't be that happy if we saw how its actually made relative to standards we are used to seeing in other industries.  This may be unfair on some firms who really do work efficiently, but if that's the case, they're keeping pretty quiet about some real competitive advantages they could be marketing on.

In any event, it should be relatively easy to work out if things are as good as they should be - just ask the right questions.  Law isn't unique.  Clients should be carrying out the type of due diligence they commonly undertake on other suppliers - getting their hands dirty and undertaking site inspections, process analysis, bench marking and regular reviews. 

I've come up with 13 questions.  To get things started, the first question I suggest asking is can you show us how you actually work?  

“With LawHawk, I see an opportunity to provide the tools to close the gap between what the client expects from its lawyers and what the lawyers can deliver.  Even better, there is an opportunity to allow lawyers to exceed expectations.”  

I had a role I enjoyed with a global investment bank in London, one of the financial centres of the world.  I gave it up to take a position with a little known legaltech startup on the other side of the world, trying to solve complex problems that others haven't been able to.  Here's why.  

Happy New Year everyone! 

Typically the Christmas/New Year period in New Zealand is a time of rest and relaxation after the pre-Christmas rush that occurs every year.  This means it could be easy to miss the large number of interesting articles that surface around this time of the year, recapping on what happened in the previous year and predicting what will happen next year.

It would be a shame to miss these, because there’s still a sense of complacency and lack of knowledge in New Zealand about the amount of change that is coming, and how much time law firms will have to adapt to the change when it arrives.

We’ve captured the most interesting articles we read over the past couple of months and listed them below.  I think it is staggering how much is happening internationally, and have little doubt that 2017 will see a lot more progress than we’ve seen to date. I hope this helps you to see how real these changes are, and factor them into your plans for 2017.

What do you think about this?  Are there any other interesting articles you think should be mentioned?

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.

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: