Legal automation software has a vital role to play in the organisation of your law firm and its processes. Your firm can better handle various daily tasks, including administration, billing, and more, with legal automation. Automation offers a range of excellent benefits to law firms and their attorneys.
This article will explain what legal automation is and what it can do for your business. We’ll highlight some of the processes your firm can use it for and share the steps you can follow to introduce this software to your organisation efficiently.
What Is Legal Automation?
Legal automation includes software and tools that can automate various repetitive legal tasks. It can track specific information and organize or manage it accordingly without human input.
With legal automation, you’re not taking away the human element of the practice. Instead, you spend less time on time-intensive yet menial tasks and more time in areas that require your skills and expertise.
What Can It Do For Your Law Office?
Introducing automation has numerous benefits for your firm, but legal automation’s main advantage is increased productivity and significant time savings. With law firm automation, you can:
- Improve client experiences by speeding up and automating processes like data entry. Clients may input their information easily with data forms through the software, and the system automatically organises this information.
- Increase the number of time attorneys can spend on billable work. Often, tasks like administration count as non-billable work, costing the firm rather than bringing in money. This is particularly beneficial for smaller firms as it frees up the time of a small team and boosts their capacity.
- Reduce the time attorneys spend on repetitive, time-consuming tasks. As a result, they can focus on other, more important things that benefit from their training and skills.
- Reduce the possibility of error that can result from human input.
- Cut overhead staffing costs and fees.
- Enhance the client experience by speeding up response rates and freeing up attorneys to work directly with clients.
Processes You Can Use Legal Automation For
Your law firm has a range of processes that don’t require human input. These are some of the top processes you can use automation for:
- Document management
- Client info management
- Billing and invoicing
- Client communication
- Client feedback
Your law firm can benefit from automating some or all of these processes because it’ll free up your’s time from low-value process work and enable them to focus on more important tasks.
How To Introduce Legal Automation To Your Law Office In 5 Steps
Introducing new technology to any organisation or institutional structure can be daunting and tricky. But, with legal automation, it doesn’t have to be.
Here are five steps you can follow to help you implement the software efficiently:
Identify suitable tasks/processes
The first thing you have to do is figure out which tasks or processes would benefit most from automation.
To help you decide, you can answer these questions:
- Does the task take up time?
- Is it repetitive or routine?
- Does it require specialised legal skills?
- Is it billable?
- Is it non-billable?
The kinds of tasks that would benefit from automation are time-consuming, repetitive and non-billable tasks that don’t require attorney skills or expertise.
Define your goals
Now that you’ve identified suitable tasks, you’ll want to choose the tasks you want to automate. The best way to do this is by defining what you want to achieve from automation.
Is it about clearing up time, or do your attorneys just want to stop doing some tasks they find tedious?
Usually, it helps to start with one thing that you don’t like most.
Having clear goals will help you choose which tasks to automate first.
Research automation tools
With your tasks identified and goals defined, you can now research automation tools to find the best solution that fits your needs.
There are a variety of these platforms available for law firms.
At Amberlo, we offer a range of software tools that can automate various tasks, including:
- Billing
- Time and expense tracking
- Communication (email) management
- Matter management
- Contact and document management
- Client portal for convenient and secure communication with your clients.
These tools allow you to automate different aspects of your legal processes.
Create an implementation and management plan
Once you’ve chosen a suitable tool, you need to structure your implementation and management. Excellent software providers can make both the implementation and management processes easier by offering training, support, maintenance, and more.
Your in-house plan should include training for staff, budget, evaluation structures and KPIs.
Review and revise
The last step is to monitor the effectiveness of the solution. You should collect feedback from your staff and clients on how they experience the system through your evaluation structures. You should also set KPIs to help you track whether you meet your initial goals or not.
Conclusion
Technology plays a vital role in streamlining professional processes and creating efficient working environments. Legal automation does this for law firms, enabling you to maximise your resources and boost your productivity and success.
At Amberlo, we bring all those benefits to you. Let’s discuss your needs and goals with our expert by contacting us or scheduling a free demo.