Last week I had a call from a law firm that I first spoke to in June 2016, basically right after LawHawk launched.

The partner at that time told me “Yes, our firm is interested in the use of technology / automation etc in the profession. We have recently invested significant amounts of time (and some money) developing our own precedents and their automation using the Infinity system.”

Now, more than 5 years later, they don’t appear to have made any significant progress. Why not?

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?

[Originally posted 9 May 2017. Updated 14 November 2019].

A number of my other blog posts have suggested clients should look at how their lawyers work and ask questions, like what systems do they have? What training do they do to ensure they provide the best levels of service? 

This time I want to look at the related topic of pricing.  I say related topic, because the pricing options a law firm can offer will depend heavily on the systems they have.  A firm that has not invested in good systems is unlikely to be able to offer transparent and certain pricing. 

Perhaps reflecting this lack of investment in systems, many lawyers still use hourly rate billing and loose estimates of cost based on time that will be spent (e.g. $3,000 to $5,000...), which is inherently unsatisfactory for clients as it contains little incentive to be efficient and can often lead to nasty bill shocks (e.g. $7,000) at the end of the matter when the lawyer advises that it took longer than they thought it would.

To try and get good value, clients often focus on discounts to the hourly rate, which does not solve the problem if the number of hours is open ended. The firm could just throw 5 people onto a simple job. 

Pricing in this way can be a complete finger in the air, where not only would different lawyers within a firm be likely to charge different amounts for the same piece of work, but the same lawyer could charge different amounts on a different day.  Isn't that bizarre? 

Firms that can give greater clarity and certainty on pricing - while still giving good outcomes and not taking shortcuts - should be rewarded by clients. But, for that to happen, clients have to look beyond hourly rates and ask the right questions.  

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. 

Will the future of law belong to large or small firms?  It’s a debate that is ongoing.  

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. 

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.

The most interesting developments in the last month...

It’s been quite a month for legal tech in New Zealand, with several announcements by New Zealand firms that are worth of mention.