Usually a question hits my nucleus accumbens (brain)! What will happen if lawyers can have an advanced automation associate? Automation is the secret to simplifying and growing your law firm. When you automate tedious, time-consuming tasks, you’ll find yourself with more time to focus on client services, which means more satisfied clients and more revenue in your pocket.
This blog will outline five things that every lawyer should automate in their law firm right now, and provide tips on how to do it with affordable technology. When you automate legal services, it’s easier to devote time to doing more of what matters most to you.
From helping your clients achieve their goals and dreams to having a peaceful work-life balance. After all, the core of any successful business lies in its ability to provide excellent service at minimal cost, and automation can help with both parts of that equation.
Why do you need to automate your law practice?
- Gartner experts expect legal departments to increase their spending on legal technology threefold by 2025.
- By 2024, legal departments will automate 50% of legal work related to major corporate transactions.
Source – Gartner.com
Increasing Law Firm Productivity via Automation and Tech?
Automating legal services can help law firms in several ways:
- It can help reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. This is because automating repetitive tasks frees up time that can be spent on more billable tasks.
- Workflow automation can help improve accuracy and consistency in your work product. This is because automating tasks eliminates the potential for human error.
- Automating legal services can help improve client communication and retention. This is because automated systems can provide updates to clients in a timely and efficient manner.
- Automation of law firm practice can ensure you avoid common mistakes when doing work manually saving you countless hours.
- Automation gives timely access by providing clients with access to automated records, ensuring that they have complete visibility into their cases at all times.
Benefits of Automating Legal Services
1. Automating Legal Services
Traditionally administrative tasks performed manually in a law firm are not just time-consuming but also a waste of effort many times. Lawyers are always multitasking managing clients, cases, and other legal operations. Managing micro-tasks can mitigate frustration, however with legal tech this process can be simplified such as eDiscovery can be accomplished in half of the usual time. The process of automating tasks will not only provide a fast pace of operations but also increase efficiency and will also be in the loop.
2. Better Resource Management
Earlier, support staff like associates and paralegals were hired to perform jobs like collecting, storing, and analyzing information. This was not only time-consuming but also raised overhead costs. With legal tech, law firms can easily overcome this challenge. Automating legal services can help maintain calendar dates or paperwork. Hence law firms will have a wider space to utilize the workforce for better outcomes.
3. Declining Errors Amid Automating Legal Services
Automating legal services in your law firm decreases risk of errors. With law firms involving piles of paperwork it becomes difficult to maintain and keep a check on every single detail and information. With legal tech solutions law firms get options to give role-based access to decrease the chances of misuse of information.
4. Higher Flexibility and Usage Access
With legal tech solutions such as case management solutions and document management, lawyers and law firms can access information from anywhere anytime. Case management software allows lawyers to use ready-made custom document templates and custom client intake for the higher inconvenience.
5. Enhanced Customer Experience
Gone are the days when providing excellent legal services was it. In today’s competitive environment you need to provide excellent customer service equally with excellent legal services. With legal tech, you can streamline communication with clients, and solutions such as case management can automate the email process.
6. Ease in collaboration
With automated legal tech solutions, collaboration becomes easy; they no longer need to sit next to each other to effectively collaborate. Legal tech enables the law firm to have a smooth remote culture. Case management software provides features like role-based access for better collaboration.
Top ways to implement automation in your practice
1. Client intake process
The client intake process is the first step in automating legal services in your law firm. Automating this process, you can quickly and easily gather the information you need from new clients. This will save you time and allow you to focus on other aspects of your practice. Plus, automating your client intake process will help ensure all of your clients are treated fairly and equally.
To automate your client intake process, you will need to create a form that new clients can fill out online. This form should include basic information about the client, such as their name, contact information, and case details.
3. Document management
A sound document management system can automate a lot of tedious and time-consuming tasks that come while running a law firm. It can help you keep track of your clients, cases, and documents, and make it easy to find the information you want when you need it. A sound document management system can also help you bill your clients more efficiently and manage your finances.
That way, you don’t have to spend hours each month trying to figure out how much money is coming in and where it’s going. Instead, you can spend your time on what matters most: providing quality legal services to your clients.
4. Client communication
Attorneys are notoriously bad at returning phone calls and emails promptly. This is often because they are bogged down with research, paperwork, and court appearances. By automating your law firm, you can set up systems that will help keep track of client communication and make it easier for you to respond promptly.
This will not only improve your relationship with clients but will also simplify your practice overall. If a client needs an answer immediately, it should be easy for them to get one from you without having to wait around or follow up repeatedly.
5. Legal billing
If you’re like most law firms, your billing process is probably manual. This can be time-consuming and inefficient, leading to frustration on both the part of lawyers and clients. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Many legal billing software programs can automate your billing, making it simpler and more efficient.
One such program is CaseFox, which takes care of all aspects of billing: Invoicing, legal accounting, bulk invoicing, and payment processing. With CaseFox, all data stored into the system will automatically sync with accounting software including QuickBooks and Xero.
Lawyers can also manage their trust accounts right from the solution, so they don’t need to spend their valuable time on these tasks. And because there’s no need for additional cost or training, CaseFox offers a cost-effective solution for any size firm.
6. Legal Workflow Automation
As a lawyer, you likely have a lot of tasks and responsibilities on your plate. To help simplify your practice, consider automating some of your workflows. Task and workflow automation can help you save time and be more efficient in your law firm.
Create document templates for these situations that you can reuse again and again.
Templates will also assist client relations. One such example is legal document templates. You can automate your workflow by streamlining your document intake process by assigning custom templates for client details.
7. Legal calendaring
Automating legal services can help simplify your legal practice in several ways, but one of the most helpful is legal calendaring. A legal calendar can help you keep track of deadlines, appointments, and meetings, as well as help you manage your caseload.
Automating your legal calendar can save time and reduce the risk of missed deadlines or appointments. Plus, an automated legal calendar can be easily shared with clients and colleagues, so everyone is on the same page. It’s also easier to prioritize tasks with an automated legal calendar than with a pen-and-paper system.
8. Conflict check
One of the most important – and time-consuming – tasks for any law firm is conflict-checking. Lawyers often use software that tracks who they’re working with and automatically checks to see if there’s an issue. Even if your practice isn’t technologically advanced, a simple Excel spreadsheet will keep you organized and on top of your list of active clients.
Summing up
Automating legal services can go a long way and give immense advantage in improving efficiency and helps in attracting a lot more clients. Legal tech not just simplifies the process in a law firm but also creates a hassle-free pathway for clients. Giving clients exceptional client service boosts your law firm’s growth and increases your monetization.
Bringing legal tech services such as case management software to your law firm maintains smooth operations. Legal tech is a game-changer for modern legal firms in the last few years, due to pandemic lawyers and law firms are more comfortable adapting tech solutions to provide the best service to their clients and streamline their law firms even more and boost their profitability. Legal tech solutions are an ever-growing trend that reap greater benefits and profits in the future.