How The Law Sector Is Using Automation
Automation has brought about major changes to the legal sector, affecting more than 60% of daily tasks. It’s not only streamlining the journey for clients but freeing up valuable time for law firms too.
From 2016 to 2019, investment in British ‘lawtech’ start-ups leapt from £2.5m to £62m and continues to rise, tools aiding in legal discovery, the process by which documents relevant to a case are sourced and sequestered. Contract automation, legal research and due diligence have all seen a greater adoption within law firms.
Time Management = Reduced Costs
Typically a client’s case consists of a large volume of repetitive, routine tasks and paperwork, commonly consisting of fact-based decisions that don’t require the involvement of human intervention.
Lawyers charge you for their time. Therefore, utilising apps that can process volumes of data in minutes, as opposed to the number of days, allows them the time to use their knowledge and judgement on the case at hand.
Productivity from Anywhere
The shift to remote working during the pandemic happened almost overnight for most, this was not the case for most legal firms. Remote work presented a challenge for most lawyers because many contracts still consisted of physical documents and files or digitally stored equivalents within on-site servers.
Contract automation has allowed unlimited access to contracts anywhere in the world at any time, tools like Office 365 & Excel paired with cloud storage for contract management are a small step in the digital transformation journey. Allowing clients and firms access to documents at any time and anywhere.
A more efficient, simpler and streamlined process for all
Conveyancing is the process of preparing and compiling legal documents for a property transaction. It is a necessary requirement for purchasing, selling and remortgaging a property.
In recent months the HM Land Registry has been working towards its ultimate goal of an improved, faster, data-led conveyancing process.
With the Automation of some aspects of land registration, the goal is to see the customer receive services that are increasingly near instant or real-time. Making the processes a less stressful and more streamlined experience for both parties.
Automating Invoicing
Turning the legal invoicing workflow from a manual task into an automated one cuts down on manual time tracking, invoice generation and invoice delivery.
Automating the process closes the gap between invoicing and collections, and lawyers can send out more accurate and clear bills that clients can immediately pay, saving time from the unnecessary back-and-forth communication explaining, correcting and formatting errors.
The danger of over-automation
While automation in the legal sector improves the client experience, over-automation can have a negative impact on the client experience, where processes that require the human touch have been automated. That form of over-automation can frustrate clients, tech can seem cold, unresponsive, and incapable of reacting appropriately to client needs.
The human cost
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis shows around 1.5 million jobs in England are at high risk of some of their duties and tasks being automated in the future.
Young people and those who work part-time are most likely to work in Lower-skilled jobs such as legal secretary positions which could be lost to automation, however, on a more positive note, this would be offset by the new high-skilled roles needed to develop and manage the new technologies being introduced.