When I’m asked for the best resources to improve overall contracting processes and outcomes, there are two that I can recommend knowing they will provide excellent insights and return on investment.

While particularly relevant for in-house legal teams and contract managers (who can get immediate benefits), they offer significant value to commercial lawyers in law firms who want to understand how they can really add the most value to their clients’ businesses.

Topics: Document Automation, Procurement, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Law Firm Strategy, Productivity

Looking ahead to the coming year, I think (maybe with a bit of hope thrown in) several themes will be key. This is what we will be focussing on helping our customers with, and in our own business.

Topics: Practise of Law, Future of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, Law Firm Management, Compliance, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Law Firm Strategy, Productivity

When selling a house, an owner has a choice about whether to sell the house "as is, where is" or to do it up before putting it on the market.

It might seem like an unnecessary amount of cost and effort to replace the kitchen, bathroom, and 20-year-old carpet when you won't be the one who is around to enjoy using it. Why not just let the new owner put things in how they want them?

But not everybody in the market to buy a house wants to go through the whole effort of a significant renovation. Those that do are probably DIY renovators looking for a bargain. The number of people willing to take on a significant renovation while paying full value is much lower.

Given the choice, many people think it's easier and better to build their own home exactly as they want rather than try and retrofit it into someone else's home and clean up someone else's mess.

Similar issues apply when selling a law firm.

Topics: Legal Technology, Law Firm Management, Law Firm Strategy

Introduction: 

As legal automation experts, we understand the immense potential of improving and automating common legal processes to save time and streamline operations. We have a great track record of delivering successful automation projects for in-house legal teams with very strong returns on investment.  

However, law firms have been different.   

We have realised that merely automating tasks may not always yield the expected benefits for law firms. The true value – and requirement - lies in a holistic transformation, where automation plays a crucial role but is just one piece of the puzzle.  

In this blog, we delve into the importance of a comprehensive transformation strategy and how collaboration with experts is necessary to propel law firms towards success. 

Topics: Law Firm Management, Law Firm Marketing, Law Firm Strategy, Law Firm Profitability, Law Firm Pricing

Law firms are known for their profitability, but often the challenge lies in translating such financial success into capital value for the owners when they are looking to exit their practice. In this blog, I look at how forward-thinking law firm owners can create more value and recover much of it upon selling their ownership share by investing in digital solutions for their clients on a subscription basis. 

Topics: Law Firm Management

 

 

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A recent series of articles published by Zac de Silva and Mark Fisher touched on issues that we've been observing recently too.

Mark Fisher states, "I've never seen a candidate-short market as extreme as this… and I worked in London through the GFC from 2006 to 2012. It's putting so much pressure on all of us and that's across every single industry, whether it's nursing, retail, hospital, professional services, engineering, tech, digital – every single industry is dramatically short."

It's clearly become very challenging for law firms too, and it will get worse.

The article above contains some great suggestions on better managing retention and staff recruitment.

There's another lever that can also help – technology.

Topics: Practise of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Legal Operations

I had two interesting conversations with law firm clients last week.

Both involved scenarios under which our automation would improve an overall business process and result in the law firm needing to do less in generating draft documents.

Neither conversation was based on wanting to pay the lawyers less.

Topics: Practise of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Value Pricing

Topics: Practise of Law, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Legal Operations

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

Artificial Lawyer recently published an article by Karl Chapman, the CEO of Kim Technologies. The Democratization of Document Automation: We have Reached the Tipping Point.

I'm sure that Kim is an excellent piece of technology, and anything that can make it easier to create automated templates at lower cost is a good thing. But this article significantly oversimplifies the work required to get good outcomes from an automation project.

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