Law Automation: Benefits and Use Cases
Automation can handle contract drafting, administrative tasks, document creation and more.
The Modern Law Firm series delves into how AI can streamline your law firm — whether it’s by saving you time and money, eliminating mistakes and redundancies or making your workflow more efficient.
Legal teams can use their time more wisely through the help of law automation, a process that can take care of routine tasks. While there’s a connection between automation and artificial intelligence (AI), the two are not the same. Learn more about how automation can improve legal workflows and the client experience and how it compares to AI.
What Is Legal Automation?
Legal automation is the process of using legal automation software to automate repetitive tasks. Law firms can use automation for legal documents, client intakes, contract management, and client communications.
Why Automate Legal Processes
Legal workflow automation can benefit your team, helping you work more smoothly. Here are a few reasons you want to consider automation for your firm:
Increases Efficiency
Automation can make you more efficient. Legal automation tools can complete tasks quickly—much faster than a human can. For example, if a legal assistant has to review documents to fill out forms, it can be time-consuming. Automation tools can help you complete more tasks.
Gives Back Time
If your legal department is spending less time on rote tasks, it opens your team up to focusing on the work that is harder to automate.
Decreases Human Error
Manual processes can lead to errors. Repetitive tasks might not be complicated, but they may lead to distraction or boredom. Staring at the same information can also make it difficult to spot a mistake, especially if it's something like misspelling the name "Brian" as "Brain."
What Legal Services Can You Automate?
Legal technology like automation can handle a variety of tasks, including:
-Contract drafting
-Contract review
-Administrative tasks
-Document creation
-Legal research
-Online payments
The type of services you should automate in the legal field are those that can follow a formula (like drafting a contract), that don't have too many outliers, and that are easy to replicate. Legal document automation is a perfect example of this.
What Legal Services Should You Not Automate?
Not every legal task is appropriate for automation. Here are a few that you shouldn't automate:
Sensitive News
Sensitive news should come directly from lawyers. Automation tools do not have the empathy to deliver disappointing news.
Legal advice
Legal advice should only come from lawyers. Automation tools cannot provide reliable legal advice.
Negotiations
Negotiations are also not best left to automation tools. This can affect outcomes, negatively affecting client satisfaction.
Anything that interferes with client relationships and tasks that are only reserved for house lawyers are not good candidates for automation.
What Is AI?
Artificial intelligence can carry out tasks that have traditionally needed human intelligence. AI can automates simple tasks. AI systems analyze data and make decisions to produce better, more accurate results.
Automation vs. AI Automation
Automation and AI automation can both help law firms work more efficiently, but they aren’t exactly the same. Here are some similarities and differences:
Similarities
- Both automation and AI can handle simple tasks
- Automation and AI reduce errors
- Both systems can increase productivity in the workplace
- AI and automation can give teams back more time
Differences
Will Automation and AI Replace Lawyers?
Automation will not replace lawyers. Automation technologies can give your legal practice a competitive advantage, but you should think of automation as more of a partner than a replacement. The goal of automation is to reduce manual tasks that can take too much time, like organizing documents with ease, but it is not the best option for duties that require making a connection with clients, handling things with sensitivity, or creative solutions.
