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How Technology Can Help In-House Counsels to Work Better

James Kenney, Head of Client Solutions, Lawyers On Demand

James Kenney, Head of Client Solutions, Lawyers On Demand

The idea of working better is only measurable by personal opinion, the key performance metrics are in finding efficiencies and reducing time and cost to your day to day operations.

At Lawyers On Demand (LOD), we find ourselves in a unique position; not only do we partner closely with a wide range of in-house teams, we also have our lawyers based on site within these teams. This provides us with an insight into the challenges In-House Counsel face, and some best practice solutions that have been implemented.

The headlines declaring the replacement of lawyers with robots, whilst way over the top and dramatized, offers not a challenge to their existence but an opportunity to step away from their computer and participate in the strategic conversations. If a company can automate the creation of Non-Disclosure Agreements, imagine what that lawyer could do with that time saved.

As the demands increase on a corporate legal team, so does the necessity to improve processes, operations and the general workflow. This is where the fundamental change needs to occur, buying an off the shelf product isn’t going to fix the problem. The technology is the icing on the cake.

It is a simple concept, package up the less valuable work and either automate it or put it into a system that allows the business to do it themselves. The legal team can then focus on the high-end work.

The challenge facing many lawyers today is that there is just so much technology available, so much so that the market has had to categorize it all, FinTech, LegalTech, and now RegTech for instance. It is important to understand what you need first, then you may be able to see the wood from the trees.

Contract Review and Expertise Automation

Technology can be used to supplement or substitute some of the work of a lawyer allowing them to perform tasks quicker and more effectively, or allowing the lawyer to spend their valuable time on more strategic tasks.

Research has suggested in-house teams spend 50% of their time reviewing contracts. Lawyers do not enjoy slowing down business, by utilizing an Artificial Intelligence tool and automating the review of contracts, a potential bottleneck can be avoided. This will decrease the risk of non-compliance whilst freeing up a lawyer’s time, this can also ensure changes to regulation are reflected in your database of contracts without the engagement of a lawyer spending hours sifting through the mountain of documents.

Expertise Automation is becoming more prominent in the highly regulated industry sectors with legal teams developing a compliance directory that the business can access 24 hours a day, look at them as a ‘virtual legal counsel’.

The challenge facing many lawyers today is that there is just so much technology available, so much so that the market has had to categorize it all, FinTech, LegalTech, and now RegTech for instance

Legal Playbooks and Contract Drafting

Each corporation has their own unique commercial practices and legal requirements, yet a surprisingly low number of legal departments use Legal Playbooks. By building a suite of contract templates outlining the company’s differing stances for each clause based on preferred, worst-case and bottom-line, contracts can be processed without the reliance or even input of the legal team.

By pre-defining a set of parameters outlining decisions and processes, the legal team can develop custom templates. A document can then be generated through answering a set of pre-defined questions. It will reduce the reliance on the legal team as the business can do it themselves.

SaaS and Cloud Computing

Rather than the arduous task of putting a business case in to install a new solution, SaaS allows many of the solutions discussed in this article to be implemented by simply subscribing. With huge strides in the implementation of flexible working initiatives, productivity can be increased through greater accessibility.

This leads to a great paradigm shift in the legal profession, collaboration. The competitive nature of a career in the law has perhaps forced lawyers to work independently. With the dawn of the legal technology boom, collaboration has been at the forefront. Lawyers are now able to work with clients and colleagues across any time-zones with the advances in cloud based solutions, and of course video-conferencing technology.

The electronic signature is an ideal example of a cost-effective and easy to implement Software as a Service that can offer immediate returns. The time spent inscribing a mountain of documents, and that is only once they have all been collated in the first place, is wasted time. You can now sign documents on the way home on the train using your phone, and there is an audit trail if you need one.

Matter management and Legal Support

The development of cloud-based technology has resulted in innovative control panel solutions for in-house teams. It may be time for General Counsel to do away with the Excel spreadsheets.

Using a dashboard, one can manage their internal and external matters and keep abreast of their progress in real-time. The reporting capabilities are ideal for a General Counsel walking into an Executive meeting. You can now proudly present on key metrics and demonstrate the team’s value.

Matter Management tools offers functionality such as grading a matter on its complexity and also its strategic value. Using this information you can identify the low-level and the high-value work and make an informed decision on in-sourcing and outsourcing.

If you are faced with a huge volume of legal enquiries from the business, the ideal solution is to reduce the reliance on the legal team rather than buying a solution to manage it. Host a suite of documents and templates for the wider business to reference on an Intranet site, rather than them asking frequently asked questions of the legal team.

The key to technology is that it is scalable and affordable, there are in fact many freeware tools available. The opportunity to invest in Artificial Intelligence technology is out of reach for many an in-house team, at least until they commoditize it. With the emergence and recent acceptance that cloud technology is safe and secure, there are now sandboxes available to budding innovators to experiment and find a solution that works for them and their team.

In house lawyers are at the coalface of change within the legal profession. With different pressures placed on them compared to private practice the challenge is how to do more with less.That is where technology can play a significant role and where investment will be worth it in future-proofing the legal function.