LawHawk Blog

The 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey contains some fascinating findings after surveying 772 participants across 20 industries and 48 countries. There is room for optimism, but a number of apparent inconsistencies and perhaps overall pointers to many legal teams repeating the same mistakes and getting similar outcomes for 2025.

Some of the key findings and my comments on them are set out below.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Self-Service Legal Automation, Compliance, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Productivity

One of the things we regularly see legal teams grapple with is when to put their legal automation solution into live use.

Having done the hard yards of reviewing and refining their documents and the process, having it automated to a high standard, and having done a fair amount of testing within the legal team and with some key users, there is often a feeling that still more needs to be done before setting it live.

I’d encourage you to consider the benefits of putting it live earlier.

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

Like many involved in legal automation, we initially started with a focus on document automation.

This was the particular pain point we had experienced as banking and corporate lawyers ourselves, and we were looking for a way to draft complex legal documents much more quickly and with fewer errors.

When we set up LawHawk eight years ago, there weren’t many options for broader workflow automation, so most initial projects were limited to document automation. Even so, it was common for our projects to deliver 75% or more time savings when drafting individual documents, and potentially much more when delivering packages of documents. This could often translate to several hours of time savings for drafters per matter.

Topics: Future of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Self-Service Legal Automation, Legal Automation, Legal Operations

The 2024 World Commerce & Contracting APAC Summit on 12 and 13 August was a great reminder of the importance of contracts in everything we do and the need to create more value in our contracting.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Self-Service Legal Automation, Legal Automation, Email Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Knowledge Management

In legal automation, the most important thing is actually getting started and finding an initial project to get going with. Too many legal teams think about it, and think about it, and never actually start.   But where do you start? 

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Self-Service Legal Automation, Automated NDAs, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management, Productivity

Research by Deloitte in their In-house Insights Report “Trusted navigators in complex and challenging environments” prepared in response to a September 2022 survey of New Zealand's in-house legal community, showed that keeping up-to-date and compliance with legal, regulatory and government policy updates was the number one issue that legal teams are concerned about.

Regulatory compliance has become increasingly onerous, but in my view, traditional methods of managing compliance are no longer fit for purpose as a means of keeping up.

Topics: Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Self-Service Legal Automation, Compliance, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Productivity

I'm looking forward to the 2024 ILANZ conference on 22 and 23 May. It's a great opportunity to get a feel for the issues and priorities of the New Zealand in-house legal community, as well as to connect with others who are working with, and providing solutions to, in-house lawyers.

This year, I'll be particularly interested in gauging in-house lawyers' feelings about technology and their plans to invest in it. Even as recently as September 2022, Deloitte's research in their In-house Insights Report “Trusted navigators in complex and challenging environments” prepared in response to a September 2022 survey of New Zealand's in-house legal community, showed that more than half of in-house teams were planning no change in their investment in technology. I found that surprising at the time.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Self-Service Legal Automation, Compliance, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management

 

I found the latest podcast by Ron Baker and Ed Kless in The Soul of Enterprise (The Time Tax: The Crime of Stealing Customers’ Time) very thought provoking. I recommend it highly.

It is based on an article by B Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore – Competing for Customer Time.

While there is ongoing discussion about the hourly billing model and lawyers charging for their time, the focus in the podcast and article is on the value of the client’s time and how to avoid wasting it.

Pine and Gilmore come out strongly:

"While not crimes against humanity, time-wasters are certainly offences against human customers. The worst thing you can do is waste your customers’ time – yet companies do it all the time.”

They go on to say:

“Companies can create value for customers by eliminating activities that waste their time; saving their time when so desired; offering experiences where time is valued; and even helping customers to wisely invest their time.”

and

“No company should impose wasted time on customers. The primary strategic choices today focus on time well saved and time well spent.”

This made me think about how this applies to our business, LawHawk, and the legal automation solutions we design, build and support. I have set out my thoughts below.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Self-Service Legal Automation, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management

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

Earlier this month I was at the ILANZ conference. It was an excellent event - the best ILANZ I have been to.

There were several indications that technology for lawyers has matured a lot over the last year.

Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Digital Signatures, Self-Service Legal Automation, Compliance, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Contract Management