3 examples of workflows for legal professionals
For today’s lawyers and accountants, legal automation platforms are playing an increasingly important role. They are now a tool to both immediately gain in productivity while also preparing for future developments in the legal and accounting professions.
The importance of legal automation will continue to grow in the coming years. Indeed, this technology can be of great help to law firms and accountancy firms to increase productivity, save money and bring even more added value and satisfaction to their clients, in particular through an improved advice and support service.
However, it is not always easy to understand how creating automated workflows for legal tasks can help a firm improve productivity and enhance client satisfaction.
Let’s take a closer look at what is meant by the term “workflow”. We’ll then consider 3 examples of workflows for law firms and accountancy firms.
What exactly is a workflow?
The typical definition of a workflow consists of representing in the form of a flow all the operations to be carried out to accomplish tasks or activities grouped together in a single business process.
Thus, a workflow is used to describe all the actions and tasks distributed among the various actors in a process, defining the participants, the deadlines, and the validation methods while providing each of the actors with the information required to carry out their task.
With the advent of new technologies, workflows can automate a large number of administrative and/or time-consuming tasks in order to increase productivity.
Integrating such workflow management and automation systems for the legal and accounting professions brings us to the principle of “legal automation”.
Legal automation is simply the use of new technologies linked to Legal Tech to deploy workflows in the legal profession.
Legal automation, one of the major challenges for the legal and accounting professions
If the new technologies and work organizations brought by Legal Tech might have initially frightened the professionals in this field of activity, it is now better understood that the digitalisation of the legal and accounting professions is not intended to replace lawyers, jurists, or accountants with computers.
On the other hand, as in all areas of activity, the digitalisation of our world and technological advances in terms of artificial intelligence and automation are forcing us to adapt and review our service offerings.
It is therefore necessary to start thinking today about the changes that need to be made in the organisation of your firm or department, rethinking the services that you provide to your clients.
It goes without saying that the development of consultancy and support services is generally emphasised in order to make the most of these productivity gains.
Now that we know what workflows are and why they are so important for the legal and accounting professions, let’s look at some examples of automated workflows in these two areas of activity.
3 examples of workflows for law and accountancy firms
A workflow to create a limited liability company in 7 days
One of the most frequent tasks for a chartered accountant is to create articles of association for the creation of a company.
The LLC (Limited Liability Company) is a very popular company form. It allows for a favourable social and tax regime for spouses working in commerce.
Imagine being able to set up an LLC in 7 days with a minimum of effort.
To do this, you can create an automated scenario from the beginning of the process. You start by filling in a simple questionnaire that includes all the necessary information: company name, main activity, number of employees, amount of share capital, name of CEO, address and phone number, as well as all the necessary supporting documents (ID, proof of address…).
Then an email will be sent to ask the persons concerned to validate the various documents and forms created automatically directly on the automation platform.
The entire process can thus be automated and digitally integrated, right up to the signing of the articles of association and even their publication in a legal gazette.
This is how a tool such as Alf allows you to centralise all the information necessary for the creation of companies, to create and centralise documents automatically, to alert external contacts by email when they have an action to take, and more.
A workflow to automatically send invitations for a general meeting
The role of the general meeting of shareholders is to decide on the company’s decisions and in particular on the approval of the accounts and the allocation of the company’s profits at the annual meeting. However, the partners may also vote on more specific decisions.
The notice or invitation to a general meeting (GM) must be sent to all participants before the meeting is held. Failure to comply with the formalities for sending this document may result in severe penalties.
In order to avoid any risk of error or non-compliance with the deadlines, you can use Alf to fully automate the sending of invitations to a general meeting.
This is a multi-step process that allows you to enter all the necessary information about the company concerned, have the documents validated and send them to the appropriate persons for signature.
It will then send the invitations to the guests. And all this is done almost automatically thanks to various tasks such as electronic signature, automatic notifications and automatic emails.
Change of address of the registered office
There are many reasons why the registered office may be transferred: the proximity of the legal representative’s personal residence to the registered office, the search for larger premises, the need to move abroad, etc. Geographically, the change may be within the territory of the same commercial court registry, or it may come from another registry or even a foreign country.
Geographically, the change may take place within the territory of the same commercial court registry, or it may come from another registry or even a foreign country. In theory, the change entails a change in the address of the registered office listed in the articles of association. This requires a prior transfer decision and a corresponding amendment of the articles; both decisions must be taken by the company’s organs holding this power.
To automate such a procedure, first fill in a questionnaire to generate the articles of association. Then automatically send the document to the people who need to validate the document. If this is a service that you are selling, you can have the payment made online at this point. The documents needed to finalise the formalities are then generated and the documents to be sent to the bank are automatically transmitted. The updated documents are then sent to the signatories, the bank is asked to log on to the Alf platform and the request to open an escrow account with your bank is automatically made.
You will then be able to download your new IBAN, receiving an email with instructions on how to deposit your funds.
The possibilities depend on your business and your creativity
These are just 3 examples of potential automations for legal tasks. And of course, this type of workflow can be reproduced for many of the daily tasks undertaken by accountants, lawyers, or legal departments. They can also help internal employees work more efficiently and synergistically with each other.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of workflows you can automate:
- A permanent or fixed-term employment contract
- A certificate of employment
- Filing of annual accounts for a simplified corporation
- Change of auditor
- Change of corporate purpose
- Change of name of a company
And the best part is that you don’t need to know anything about IT to use these services on a daily basis. With Alf, they are delivered turnkey to fit perfectly into your current ecosystem; you then simply decide on the dates, resolutions and details of the invitation by customising a template.
Alternatively, you can white label these services to present them directly to your clients or integrate a tool like Alf into your internal workflows.
The automation of legal tasks represents a huge opportunity for the legal and accounting professions. Don’t risk missing out or being left behind by your competitors.
Would you like to discuss this and get a demonstration? You can ask for a demo on our website, we’ll be happy to show you the Alf platform in detail.
A lawyer for 20 years with international law firms and worldwide companies (Canal+, PwC Legal, Nomos, Amazon), I’ve had the experience on the inside: too much time wasted on regularly monitoring recurring tasks linked to files, with low added value. Alf, the first workflow automation platform for the legal files, was designed and developed to respond to this critical problem. Customizable, collaborative and accessible in all languages, Alf is also part of a GreenTech approach that encourages responsible innovation by reducing your carbon emissions. — Sabine Zylberbogen, Registered lawyer and Founder
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