How can you enhance your legal know-how with automation?
Making the digital transformation thanks to legal software is no longer just an option; it’s a necessary step for today’s legal and accounting professionals.
For example, in 2021, 68% of companies surveyed had an online presence. This figure rose to 76% for those with 20 or more employees, an increase of 16 points compared to the 2019 figures.
Still, lawyers in law firms and accountancy firms are lagging behind in digitising their skills and using new technologies in their daily work. But the technological revolution is underway, in legal tech and accounting tech in particular.
Historically, the term legal tech has been used to designate the technologies used by law firms and accountants to help them with practice management, accounting, invoicing, storage and document retrieval.
But over the past decade or so, the term has evolved to include solutions that facilitate public access to justice and the automation of legal tasks, sometimes even without the intervention of a lawyer or legal professional.
The growth of the legal tech market has been remarkable, with the sector already generating $17 billion worldwide in 2019. The automation of legal tasks is profoundly transforming the organisation of law firms, both in their structure and in their relations with clients.
Legal tech at the service of productivity gains and client satisfaction
New technologies related to legal tasks were initially viewed with great reluctance by professionals in the field. At first, these services were seen as a new type of competition that could suppress their business.
Today, adopting these technologies as a new way to improve efficiency has become a must. Legal tech allows lawyers and accountants to bring more value to their clients, to increase efficiency within their teams and to offer more transparency in the exchanges during the management of a case.
What are the main trends in legal tech for 2022?
Technologies related to the automation of legal tasks make it possible to:
Reduce costs
By automating legal tasks, you can reduce the risk of human error and the “hidden costs” associated with these errors (damages, missed deadlines, lost documents, etc.).
Then there are also IT costs. All legal and accounting professionals need IT tools to work, and some have even developed an in-house team to secure, develop and manage IT equipment, as well as integrate tools for accounting, document storage, mail servers, etc. However, the use of customisable, secure SaaS platforms, integrating useful business tools, allows internal IT costs to be reduced and controlled.
Gain productivity
The use of new technologies makes it possible to work with intelligent documents to significantly reduce the time spent typing (up to 90% in some cases) and to focus on the important elements of a contract, not just the formal ones.
Implementing automated workflows with a specific platform will also help you save time in validating contracts. You will no longer need to follow up with your various contacts and you can avoid some travel.
Furthermore, by centralising all your tools on the same interface with your colleagues and clients, you improve transparency and information sharing on the follow-up of your files, without time-consuming calls and emails.
Better synergy between team members
In addition, legal tech technologies will enable you to improve synergy between the members of your teams, to find the information needed to process a case much more quickly, etc.
For example, you will be able to automatically send an email to all employees when a document containing all the information required for a contract is updated.
For certain tasks, such as setting up a company, these new technical solutions will enable your employees to become up to 70% more efficient.
Improving client satisfaction
In general, the automation of legal tasks will help you to work more transparently with your clients. For example, they will be able to access their files, the steps completed, those still to be done, the persons responsible, the documents created, those to be generated, etc., without having to make a single follow-up phone call or reminder.
Overall, it is estimated that implementing automation of legal tasks in a law firm can save the equivalent of one working day per week, or 20% of your working time.
How can business process automation help your firm?
How can you promote your know-how and added value to your customers?
New technologies will not make the legal and accounting professions disappear; on the contrary, they will enable them to evolve and offer new services and new ways of working with their teams and their clients.
But how can you demonstrate your know-how and added value in this evolving and transitional context?
For example, it is now possible, thanks to the automation of legal tasks, to create a limited liability company in 1 week and to limit exchanges with your clients to strategic discussions, excluding exchanges related to identity verification, the generation of standard documents, their sharing with third parties, etc.
Consulting requires time, and time is a scarce resource for legal and accounting professionals. It is therefore essential to optimise the time spent with a client by focusing on high value-added subjects and thus offer new, partially digitised services.
For example, for a chartered accountant, it will be a question of developing missions linked to business management, not just bookkeeping. You will thus be able to offer forecasts or monitoring tables.
For law firms, this could mean offering new consulting services to companies.
The time savings generated by the new technologies will help you to highlight your expertise and clarify your positioning.
As you will have understood, if the new technologies linked to the automation of legal tasks or to artificial intelligence are going to change the missions of these professions, they are a real opportunity to be seized today.
Indeed, a divide is likely to be created between law and accounting firms that are already adopting these new technologies and those that continue to work in the traditional way.
By transforming your organisation to provide new and useful services to your clients, you will be one step ahead of others who have not yet made the leap.
How about you? How far have you gotten with the digitisation of your practice? To find out more about Alf and the automation of legal tasks, request a demo!
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