The growing pressure facing law firms to provide their services faster and at a lower cost to clients means that there is a significant demand to adapt their way of working and even be more efficient. As one of the oldest professions, the legal sector has resisted adopting technological changes, for cultural, competitive and economic reasons, but the industry is taking steps to catch up.
About the Author
Vasile Tiple, Deputy General Counsel, UiPath.
In 2014, investment in legal technology amounted to £ 1.5 million; In 2019, the figure has exploded to £ 61 million. Only two years ago, only 10% of the top 100 law firms used artificial intelligence (AI) technology to improve the accuracy and speed of processing large amounts of information. This has increased to 40%, which shows that while the sector has made great progress with new technologies, there are still huge benefits that have not yet been unlocked. Gartner’s results this year support this: only 2% of current legal budgets are spent on technology, although it has been revealed that RPA in legal sector work can reduce costs by 20-40 percent , while reducing human error and increasing compliance.
Legal robots are the perfect technological ally for legal departments and law firms because they can handle repetitive and tedious operational tasks, since 63% of internal legal work are repeatable and fact-based decisions that do not imply the need for trial or human interpretation By assuming these tasks, instead of human workers, RPA releases legal advisors to spend time with clients, creating more billable hours and allowing law firms to become more competitive.
Reaping the benefits of RPA
The main advantage of RPA is the reduction of time and costs, especially when considering that the most common method of collection used by law firms is hourly. Software robots can complete tasks up to five times faster than human workers, and in light of this, Deloitte Consulting LLP has joined an alliance to jointly develop and deliver RPA solutions to its customers globally while establishing a More innovative and focused approach. collaboration to automate legal and legal compliance.
The first solution was a robot that can search for information in public records, which is common in due diligence processes, and that takes approximately seven minutes, unlike the three and a half hours it takes for a person to do the same. homework. Software robots also reduce errors, which can be very expensive for businesses. This year, a mistake in drafting a contract cost a leading London law firm almost £ 2 million.
There are many repetitive processes that require a lot of time and are mandatory, but that should not necessarily be performed by a lawyer and that RPA can handle them. Consider trade mark registrations or verifications of disputes made by law firms and review and process large volumes of stored documents as part of a large transaction or due diligence process, are just some of the processes that are suitable for automation. By automating these repetitive tasks for software robots, lawyers’ time is freed to concentrate on what really matters: the complex legal problems that these transactions can generate.
Public Sector Law and APR
RPA can also help with legal functions in the public sector, which faces problems that require easy-to-implement and low-cost solutions: from a high volume of work that blocks productivity to employee shortages, cost optimization, frequent changes in regulations and department policies and siloing. Bureaucracy, waste of paper, inefficient or obsolete systems are the most common problems that can be improved through automation with minimal costs, compared to a more complete digital transformation program. There are a number of RPA solutions that public sector law departments can use, as well as private and professional companies:
- Export control robots: which reduce commercial risk and improve legal productivity, while automating the validation of new parties and partners.
- Regulatory robots: which compile regulatory changes, as well as automate the monitoring and updating of changes within the European Union (EU Parliament, European Commission) and databases of legal and regulatory requirements of the United States.
- Conflict of interest robots: which automates the dissemination and verification of conflicts of interest within an internal database that allows searches, and reduces the time needed to identify conflicts from weeks to minutes.
- Contract robots: that automate the identification of agreements that require legal review, accept or reject changes in standard templates and common clauses and allow legal professionals to focus on the review and negotiation of complex contracts.
- Robottorney, which is a legal consultation chatbots that answers common queries via email or internal chat tools and provides real-time responses, freeing legal advisors to focus on more complex and strategic requests.
What does the future hold for the legal sector?
Deloitte predicts that by 2025, the accelerated pace of technological developments, changes in the demographics of the workforce and the need to offer customers more value for money will force a profound transformation of the legal sector. Professionals must keep up with the rapid pace of change and adapt quickly to the needs of their clients.
Adopting an “automation first” mentality, either internally or externally, will undoubtedly transform the way the legal sector works. Addressing your business challenges with a hybrid workforce between humans and software, using software robots to automate daily processes and freeing humans for more creative and strategic tasks, is meant to make a big difference. Adopting a first automation approach and providing a clear path forward for organizations to adopt a new dynamic will result in legal success and change the way the legal sector works forever.