It's not uncommon for someone to show some initial interest in a legal automation project, get excited seeing how it could make a real difference in their work and that of their team, and then be told that it is not possible.
What can you do in that situation?
Topics: Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Compliance, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Law Firm Profitability
A common concern we hear when talking to prospective clients about legal automation is that they haven't got a budget, and they don't think they can get one.
Often, however, this is before we have discussed the size and cost of the problem or the opportunity to be addressed and the expected benefits, and therefore, it needs more context before a price can be agreed and a budget could be obtained.
What should you do before worrying about price and budget for an automation project?
Topics: Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Compliance, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Law Firm Profitability
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 evaluating new technology, a proof of concept can be a very helpful way of ensuring you get what you think you are getting while avoiding unnecessary costs.
However, we sometimes see proof-of-concept projects that go off the rails, don’t achieve the expected outcomes, and cost a lot of money.
There is one particular mistake that we frequently see people make.
Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management
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
Because of our focus on document and legal automation, you might expect us to advocate for automating everything, but as with most things, it’s about context.
Automation is great when you have very high volumes, many standard options you need to choose from, and/or details that need to be entered multiple times. In those situations, you can save 75% or more of the drafting time while ensuring that the right clauses are inserted in the correct format. It can get you 90% or more of the way there, allowing you time to add the final 10%.
You don’t need to automate all documents, though.
Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Self-Service Legal Automation, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management
In most cases they are consistently inconsistent and terrible.
It not only reflects badly on the organisation and how the substance of the document may be perceived, but it’s a huge cost as it takes a lot of time for highly paid staff to fix, and refix, formatting each time a document is created.
If you want to automate your documents, its really important to fix your Word styles first. Even if you don't want to automate right now, it's still worth fixing your templates.
Topics: Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management
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
021 339 527
lawhawk@lawhawk.nz
