Posted 8 October 2019

In today’s increasingly digital world, many law firms are turning to automation to keep pace with competitors, enhance client relationships and deliver high quality service. One area where automation technology is making a significant impact is matter-based workflows. 

The corporate sector has long employed automated workflows to manage cost-efficiency, improve time-to-market and optimise customer self-service. Today, forward-thinking law firms and legal departments are unlocking the benefits of workflow automation to transform legal operations, including accelerating processes, tightening compliance and allowing lawyers to reclaim their valuable time. 

The potential of automated workflows in the legal sector is immense. According to research conducted in 2017, administrative tasks take up 48 percent of a lawyer’s time that could be spent on billable work. That means that lawyers spend almost half of their time on repetitive, mundane tasks that could be done in a fraction of the time spent. Additionally, 87 percent of practising lawyers report still using manual processes, like pen and paper, to proofread and take notes, using more time and resources than required and increasing the level of risk for human error.

There are many benefits to embracing digital transformation and incorporating workflow automation into your firm. Here, we take a look at three core reasons to consider automating your firm’s workflows and business processes.

Increase Internal Efficiencies

Today’s legal clients seek greater transparency, on-demand advice and value-driven services. Workflow automation can liberate lawyers and legal operations from the burden of manual processes and improve the time it takes to conduct crucial legal processes, including client intake, staff onboarding, document generation and contract execution. For example, a firm might use workflow automation to streamline the contract lifecycle - from automating contract creation and review to securing e-signatures and automatically archiving completed contracts. 

Workflow automation enables firms to re-engineer these crucial, yet often time-consuming and manual processes, to drive greater internal efficiencies, whilst also streamlining tasks across systems and siloes. 

Reduce Risk & Maintain Compliance

In today’s constantly changing regulatory environment, it can be a challenge to keep up with the latest regulations. However, firms face greater accountability than ever before in demonstrating compliance. Using workflow automation, firms can easily embed compliance into lawyers’ daily work. In fact, best-in-class workflow automation tools, like Sysero, automatically log the matter creation process to provide a clear audit trail to ensure full accountability. Additionally, as one lawyer makes a nuanced decision based on the data at hand, that expertise then can be modeled into workflows and processes, enabling subtle judgements to be made en masse. 

Keep Legal Data Safe

Aside from increased regulatory compliance, today’s firms are also on the hook for ensuring client data is properly secured and protected, even in the case of a data breach. There are a number of ways that legal workflow automation can be used to effectively enforce data protection policies, including pseudonymization, which involves replacing the most identifying fields within a data record with artificial values from which the identity of individuals cannot be intrinsically inferred. Pseudonymization greatly reduces the risks associated with data processing, while also maintaining the data’s utility. 

Faced with evolving market demands, tighter regulations and an increased focus on data security, law firms need to embrace automated processes. Many law firms and legal teams have already adopted a legal workflow automation solution that’s been designed to meet their unique business needs and client requirements to help them address today’s changing landscape, while providing a foundation for future growth. 

To learn more about legal workflow automation, get in touch with us for a demo. We’d be happy to help you uncover how to use workflow automation for law firm or legal team.