The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have just released an Advance Notice of their intention to re-tender the All of Government External Legal Services contract, which expires on 22 September 2023.

The revised fee structure caught my eye.

Are we too focussed on whether something is innovative?

That might seem an unusual question for me to ask, you might think. After all, haven’t I been on the Advisory Board for the College of Law’s Centre for Legal Innovation for the last five years?

Isn't a large part of what LawHawk does looking at existing processes, how they can be re-engineered, and finding new ways to work for better results?

Given how little innovation has occurred in the legal profession, don’t we want to see much more of it?

It’s coming up to 5 years since LawHawk launched.

Back then, nobody was really doing legal automation. Cloud technology was only just starting to emerge and, quite fairly, most firms had little to no experience of successful automation to talk about.

In the next couple of years there were a lot of press releases about firms adopting one solution or another, but surprisingly little publication of any actual results that had come from the project. Either the firm never had a plan for broader roll-out beyond a small initial team of enthusiasts, or the realities of successful legal tech project management quickly stalled things.

So five years on, I feel there are still too many people talking about what other people should be doing, without any obvious experience of having done it themselves, or offering any insights into how others can do it too. Particularly how to get started and how to overcome the inevitable obstacles that arise.

Which is why I’m pleased to be participating in LawFest 2021 on 3 March, with a panel of people who have all got first hand experience of successful delivery of legal tech projects, and who can share insights that will help others to do the same.

Did you notice that Public Trust recently launched an online wills and enduring powers of attorney service? Yes, you did read that right. Even Public Trust now have online wills and enduring powers of attorney.

You may be thinking this presents an issue for LawHawk, given we also offer online wills and enduring powers of attorney. It probably will affect part of our business. We may lose some online opportunities to Public Trust, but at the same time their presence online will also help to grow the overall online market. Time will tell but I think it's a positive move for making wills and EPAs more accessible.

Online wills and enduring powers of attorney are still very much a niche offer, appealing to those who are comfortable or prefer doing the whole process themselves online, or who either cannot afford, or choose not to pay the costs of, a traditional legal service.

Our online offers direct to the public represents only a small part of our overall business. The larger part of our focus – as it always has been - is working with law firms to help them to offer a better and more affordable service to their clients, while also making this a more satisfying and profitable part of the practice.

In my opinion, this further shift towards online wills and enduring powers of attorney should be of greater concern to law firms in respect of their own practices. Until relatively recently, law firms were in total control of when and how clients could get wills and powers of attorney, and what it would cost. The only real competition was the trustee companies. One was recovering from significant financial and operational issues, and the other was only working 4 days per week. Both had reputations for poor service and high fees. So not much competition, and no great surprise that law firms felt no pressure to innovate their own services.

Now, both of the trustee companies have online capabilities and are pushing them hard.

How should law firms respond? I can see several possible options. The first two are:

Much of what we do here at LawHawk is far more about relationships, rather than technology.

There are so many ways of doing things better, using different types of technology or none, that you can only figure out the right approach for a particular customer through collaborative, open, discussion.

I believe this is true in any industry, but particularly in legal because many common processes are so overly complex – and sometimes bizarre – that it can be hard to unpick how they currently work, and how they ideally would work given the people involved and other relevant circumstances, without really good communication and trusting relationships.

Two things particularly reminded me of this recently.

On 9 April, Rohan Cochrane (Director, Family Law Specialists) and I delivered a webinar for the New Zealand Law Society on Remote witnessing and signing of documents during COVID-19 lock-down.

There were nearly 4,000 people on the webinar, which gives some indication of the extent to which lawyers are looking for new solutions at this time.

We didn't have a lot of time to prepare for the webinar, as it was put together on short notice.  My thinking was still coming together during the webinar, as I saw questions coming through on the chat feed.  It’s continuing to evolve, which is why I’m writing this post.

Our goal in the webinar was to look at some of the areas that appear to be causing the most issues, and to identify the most practical approaches we could.  

We weren't suggesting that anything we said was sure to be legally effective, or accepted by every other party to a process (e.g. the recipient of an affidavit).

We also weren't suggesting that these were the only, or even the best way to manage things.  I’m working on further ideas, and would certainly be keen for others that were on the webinar to build further on our suggestions, or to come up with better alternatives, and share those.  

Having had a little more time to reflect on things, I’ve been able to summarise my thinking further.  These views are my own, and not necessarily those of Rohan, the NZLS, or anyone else! 

I was interviewed for LawTalk 930 on what LawHawk has been up to, and how we are going. 

You can read the full article here, and below. 

I was interviewed for LawTalk 930 on what impact legal tech is actually having on the New Zealand legal market.  

You can read the full article here, and below. 

I was interviewed for LawTalk 916 on what the future might hold for New Zealand legal services and lawyers. 

The interview also captured the thoughts of Michael Smyth, Claudia King, Simon Tupman and Andrew King. 

You can read the full article here, and the parts of the interview that relate to me are set out below. 

It was great to see our customer Housing New Zealand profiled in LawTalk 917 for their success in working with us on document automation. 

You can read the article on the Law Society website here, and the full text is set out below. 

If you would like to discuss how document automation could provide similar benefits for you, please get in touch!