Legal workload continues to increase while staffing issues remain a concern. Finding new approaches to lessen the workload while improving efficiency and productivity is crucial. Legal workflow automation resolves many issues plaguing general counsels and legal operations, automating repetitive tasks, tracking processes, and reducing errors.

Learn how legal workflow automation might help you keep up with your team’s workload, boost your productivity, and increase your return on investment.

Key Takeaway:

• Legal workflow automation improves productivity, consistency, and profitability.
• Use workflow automation to streamline repetitive tasks so you can save time.
• Legal workflow automation helps you track and manage contracts for improved outcomes.
• Through legal workflow automation, you will have a faster, more accurate turnaround time, receiving payment sooner from clients.

What Is Legal Workflow Automation?

Legal workflow automation uses technology like AI to optimize your workflows. You input all tasks related to a process into your workflow automation, and the automation advances the process based on actions parties take and triggers automated responses.

Workflow automation may be as simple as sending emails after completing a task and as complex as generating documents and data charts.

Benefits of Legal Workflow Automation

Legal workflow automation transforms how general counsels and legal operations perform daily tasks. It not only reduces common roadblocks that result in costly delays but also boosts productivity, yielding higher returns. According to 59% of general counsels, legal teams plan to save the most costs by increasing technology use.

Here are a few specific ways your team benefits from legal automation.

Create a Scalable Strategy

A scalable legal strategy adapts to your needs. It won’t fall apart when you need to adjust your goals, change your approach, or grow your business.

Workflow automation contributes to this flexibility, because AI can auto-adjust the workflow as you make changes, avoiding delays.

Deliver Consistent, Quality Legal Experiences

Workflow automation creates a consistent experience. All legal tasks run through the same steps, including automated quality control.

Customers know what to expect and have more predictable deadlines, which you are more likely to meet.

The high standards of automation’s quality control standards also minimize the risk of human error, ensuring consistent quality.

Improve Productivity

Automation builds a seamless flow between tasks, both manual and automated. Legal workflow automation streamlines job execution, reducing delays thanks to its added structured and automated steps.

The workflow also connects teams and individuals to support better collaboration.

You will see increased productivity because automation will take care of redundant tasks. With those time-consuming manual tasks out of the picture, your legal team has more time to focus on high-value work.

All these benefits ultimately improve your productivity. A 2022 study by Morae found that 37% of general counsels consider productivity a strategic priority.

Boost Your ROI

Legal workflow automation increases your profits while cutting costs.

You will see increased profits from:

• Your ability to scale
• Improved customer satisfaction due to consistent, high-quality results
• Increased productivity
• Increased employee satisfaction

In addition, you’ll spend less fixing errors and retaining staff.

The average return on investment from software automation is 250%. Top performers saw ROIs of up to 380%.

How to Use Legal Workflow Automation

Here are five areas in which legal workflow automation can improve your team’s operations.

1. Automate Intake Forms

Intake forms serve as the foundation for many of your workflows. When clients and team members fill them in incorrectly or miss fields, it can lead to costly errors. You need quality data to improve automation, including all other areas of workflow management that rely on the intake forms.

Automating intake forms puts AI in the driver’s seat. You can customize the intake process whenever you need information through a form. Automation specifies when someone receives forms, exactly what fields they need to fill in, triggered responses after they complete a form, notifications for each action, and detailed analytics for an overview of results.

2. Document Generator

Most legal documents follow a strict template that you customize. Automation can generate those contracts because it is a task that follows a pattern. For example, you might automate contracts, NDAs, and employee contracts, saving your team hours of manual work.

Workflow automation integrates document generation, automatically sending customized contracts in response to specific triggers, ensuring a smooth transition from creation to contract review.

3. Performance Analyzer

Workflow automation continuously tracks and collects data, providing a goldmine of data for assessing your workflow’s strengths and weaknesses. By continually tracking and analyzing your performance, you can optimize your workflow to maximize your time while minimizing costs.

When problems do occur, automating helps you identify the problem, allowing for faster resolution and increased client satisfaction. You can have an automated workflow to quickly respond to data breaches and other privacy concerns to minimize the damage. It can also help you perform risk management to address future potential issues.

Workflow automation can even visualize your workflow and data, sharing these insights with relevant parties to keep everyone informed, such as creating and sending an ESG report.

4. Streamlined Billing

Billing can be one of the most frustrating parts of the legal process. Between delayed payments and inaccuracies in the invoice, you may not receive compensation for weeks, which can upset your monthly budget.

Workflow automation streamlines the legal billing process, reducing errors on invoices and speeding up the time between contract closure and billing.

Automated notifications and reminders help both clients and the legal team stay on top of open invoices.

5. Contract Lifecycle Management

Contract lifecycle management automates the contract process from start to finish. It’s one of the most cost-saving automated workflow management processes you can adopt.

Given that most contract management relies on patterns and triggers, you can streamline the process by cutting out the long waits between filling in details and receiving results.

For example, when a contractor signs the contract, that can automatically trigger the next action instead of waiting for someone in the legal team to respond manually.

You can also reduce errors in contract management by limiting human intervention so the process flows smoothly. This allows you to track and manage the contract every step of the way without interrupting the contract automation flow.

Prepare for Your Increased Workload

AI will help you tackle any increased workload. Morae uses AI and automation to streamline workloads, enabling you to surpass your productivity goals while conserving time and money.

It’s time to switch out exhausting manual tasks with a streamlined, automated workflow that fits your legal team’s needs.

Contact us to learn more about our legal services.