Over the next two years, digital transformation and automation will play a key role in the evolution of law firms as they attempt to align with competitors and even take a competitive advantage.
There are 5 key considerations for why law firms need to adopt process automation:
- Consumers want digitalisation and automation
- Processes can be made more profitable through automation
- Human errors can be reduced
- Automation better allows for a virtual and remote workforce
- Digital and automated processes help keep knowledge within the firm
Other industries are already seeing these changes - for example, in retail, companies like Amazon have created a world of friction-less trade where everything is digitalised. Consumers now expect this level of digitalisation and automation from every industry they come across.
There are a lot of legal processes that still rely heavily on slow and repetitive paper processes - these processes are full of friction and are ripe for automation. Two good examples include residential conveyancing and contract drafting. Process Automation has the potential to entirely reform these processes and with the help of analytics, can even make these processes more profitable.
Analytics can help drive change, providing evidence for where processes are inefficient or expensive for the firm. The data then helps companies put automated processes in place, leaving only the client advice and complex tasks to be delivered by a human employee.
By automating the repetitive and more mundane tasks that people in firm have to complete, it’s also possible to reduce the number of errors made. Contract processes are an interesting example of this - due to the changes needed from contract to contract, it can be fraught with human error but it’s also a repeatable fact-based process that is primed for automation.
Automation and digitalisation also helps to support those working remotely - your new virtual workforce - as digitalised documents and automated processes provide everything with the right information at the right time, regardless of where they’re working.
This level of documentation and access to information is also what helps to keep knowledge within the firm - everything can be digitalised, stored in the correct place and workflows can be set up to make information available as and when needed.
It’s time for the legal industry to take on the challenge of digital transformation and in this case, process automation, and by adopting these new practices, benefit from the advantages they bring along with the competitive advantage that puts firms above and beyond their competitors.