Legal workflow automation helps businesses automate routine tasks and unlock maximum efficiency. Automating legal processes can free up substantial time for lawyers so that they can interact more with clients and spend fewer hours dealing with manual drafting, documentation, and other tedious legal office processes.
Legal automation takes care of low-value work and prevents businesses from having to conduct searches manually. The following legal processes can be automated using tech tools and solutions:
- Electronic signing – These are universally recognized and a part of ubiquitous digital agreements.
- Contract reviews and automation – Contract automation workflows can assist businesses with various affairs and resolve disputes seamlessly. Lawyers can save hours that would otherwise be spent on sorting through unstructured documents, finding relevant clauses, and turning PDFs into structured contracts.
- Automated billing – Businesses can enjoy significant cost savings on invoice billing and deliveries through automated billing and invoicing via legal automation.
- Risk and compliance management – AI-powered legal automation tools can continuously monitor and implement the latest compliance and regulatory standards like SOC 2, CCPA, GDPR, etc.
- Case management – Attorneys can automatically schedule important dates with clients, organize meetings, and receive reminders from a centralized database. Simplified case management makes it easy to share information with other attorneys, collaborate, and access case files remotely from any location at any time.
- eDiscovery and Analytics – Document eDiscovery saves time in searching for context-based and relevant information across documents, archives, emails, and mobile devices. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and smart analytics help with sentiment analysis for complex legal documents, validate inputs, improve data accuracy, and eliminate errors as well.
- Client onboarding and data storage –Businesses can protect the confidentiality of clients, streamline onboarding processes, and automatically share quotes with them. Legal automation enables them to securely store and update records, pre-screen checklists, collect feedback, share questionnaires, and safeguard sensitive information from the reach of third parties and external agents.
Which Legal Processes Cannot Be Automated?
Although a large variety of legal processes can be automated, there are a few exceptions. Bespoke work and activities that are highly unique and complex cannot be automated. Further, cases that require human bias, judgment, or legal counseling cannot be automated.
Legal Automation Myths Busted
Myth 1: Upskilling staff is a big challenge!
Reality: Most business owners think training staff is an enormous challenge but this is far from the truth. Legal automation tools include training materials and relevant documentation which make it easy to train staff, make them proficient in legal tech, and ensure a hassle-free experience, even if they have zero technical knowledge.
Myth 2: Legal tech is too expensive and time-consuming!
Reality: Legal automation may seem like a huge investment but it is not. Many open-source solutions are being introduced to the market and paralegals can improve SLAs and save thousands of valuable hours with no-code legal workflows.