What can the right legal automation platform do for you?
In the past 5 years, legal professionals have begun incorporating a variety of digital tools in their daily practice. Between the unexpected (the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the rise of remote work and its associated changes) and the simple march of technological progress, today there’s no lack of software aimed at the law and its practitioners.
But with so many potential tools out there, a new type of complexity arises. Instead of offices filled with piles of books and paper files, legal professionals are now navigating through multiple screens, trying to make sure a widening web of digital tools keeps working properly.
That’s why Alf has long been concentrated on the benefits of a true legal platform. In particular, this means always remembering that our customers are the ones best placed to supply the raw materials that can be supercharged by Alf’s automations. By bringing your existing tools within one legal workflow automation platform and ensuring that everyone – you, your team, your client – is present and up to date on the current state of affairs, Alf can become your one-stop productivity shop.
How? The list of features is long, have a look whenever you’d like. Here, though, we wanted to highlight a few foundational points that we at Alf see as critical to building a legal platform that works for both you and your clients.
Keep your know-how in the driver’s seat
Designed from the beginning by experienced legal professionals, Alf knows that the last thing a pro wants is a tool that forces the user to adapt to how it wants to be used.
Instead, they need a tool that lets them leverage their hard-earned experience, easily creating automated workflows that take tedious daily tasks off their plate.
That’s why Alf isn’t in the business of providing legal documents; we’re in the business of helping you automate your own documents.
Concretely, that means that when you start using Alf, you’re able to upload existing documents and templates that fit your practice and the workflows you want to automate. As a platform, Alf handles the back-end: connecting procedures to ensure files are complete, managing communications, soliciting and inserting information, etc. But the basis for all that automated work comes directly from you, the legal professional.
Your documents are the starting point for your automations
(By the way, this is why Alf is perfectly adapted for any jurisdiction and any language: by starting from the documents and workflows you want to automate, no matter what they say, Alf supplies the technology needed to automate those tasks.)
Improve data security
Legal professionals have been storing documents in the cloud for years now. But which cloud? While it’s easy to go online and start using some of the biggest names – AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google –, it’s also easy to forget that the regulations around both data protection in the EU as well as the law as a particularly sensitive sector mean that you want to be 1000% sure that everything you have in the cloud is properly protected and in accordance with the GDPR.
That’s why Alf is set up to let you automatically apply GDPR regulations to all of the documents stored in your files. You also have simple yet powerful access control that lets you define any teammates’ roles and your clients’ roles, choosing between “Administrator”, “Editor”, “Lawyer”, and “Invitee” (the first three are almost always your fellow legal professionals, with the last typically being the end client(s)).
In addition to ensuring you’re following all data regulations, these guardrails are also simply good for your peace of mind. As an Alf customer, you don’t have to worry about having the wrong data shared with the wrong people, such as by adding the wrong email address when replying to a client. You define who can access a file, you define what they’ll see, and that’s it.
Deliver for clients
By streamlining communications, information requests, and other elements needed for managing files and clients, Alf’s legal platform creates two benefits: less annoying back-and-forth and more time for productive exchanges.
Less annoying back-and-forth
The former speaks for itself: no one wants to get lost in email chains, unclear deadlines, multiple requests for the same information, and so forth. With the platform keeping everyone on the same page – oftentimes quite literally! -, Alf’s clients and those clients’ clients can feel more relaxed when it comes to the progress being made in their file.
How does it work? As noted above, when you create a new file, you can invite your outside client to participate in it. With our Outlook connector, for example, you’re able to link particular emails to that file. Importantly, each file on Alf includes a unique email ID that synchronizes communication from different channels and collaborators.
Combining this centralization with a few more of Alf’s productivity features (automated deadline reminders, etc.) means that everyone involved is less likely to get lost in email chains and thus less likely to feel frustrated regarding the progress their case is making.
More time for productive exchanges
By reducing time spent on communicating and general stress levels, these technical features create a better environment for exchanges that really bring forward the legal professional’s expertise, giving the client an increased sense of confidence.
And that’s what leads to some of the feedback that we’re most proud of, because it shows we’re hitting our goal of using legal automation to improve the delivery of effective services, saving legal pros and their clients time and money.
As one client recently put it, “We’re all overworked, the legal industry has been like that for a long time. With Alf, we weren’t trying to cut headcount by replacing people with AI; our primary goal with the platform is to give our team the time we need to actually do our job well.”
So stop all that hopping between screens and tabs.
Stop filling in the same information by hand over and over.
Stop worrying about missed deadlines buried in the jumble of email replies.
Reach out today to set up a demo.
And get started on the path to effective legal workflow automation.
Alf was founded in 2019 to assist legal professionals looking to improve efficiency within their teams, reduce the time spent on managing files, and streamline internal and external case communication.
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