How Document Automation Can Benefit Your Law Practice

Research shows that lawyers spend more hours on administrative tasks and business development than on billable work. In fact, lawyers spent 48% of their working hours on administrative tasks.

What if there was a way for lawyers to free up the time spent on paperwork so that they can do more lucrative work?

Have you considered document automation for your law firm? Document automation software can benefit your firm by automating time-consuming tasks and increasing your productivity.

Interested in knowing more? Read on to learn about why you should be using document automation.

What Is Document Automation?

For the longest time, creating legal documents was a complex, painstaking task. There are many formalities, dates, and names to input. You also have to ensure the document is properly formatted with the right values and names.

A lawyer needs to spend hours out of his or her day preparing and reviewing documents for their clients. They might even hire other junior lawyers to complete these tasks for them.

This is where document automation comes in. Also known as document assembly, this tool allows law firms to automate the process of creating legal documents.

How Does Document Automation Software Work?

Document automation creates documents through questionnaires. The preparer answers questions about the client. They input details according to the prompt such as effective dates and names of the clients.

After you input the data, the software automatically assembles the document with the proper formatting and style.

The automation software then saves your work in a central repository. You can refer to past documents in the repository. You can also reuse templates for future use.

How Can Document Automation Benefit My Law Firm?

Document automation can increase your law firm’s productivity. Want to learn more? Read on to see the benefits of automated document creation.

Save Time and Money

A survey by Cornerstone OnDemand in 2014 revealed that 68% of full-time employees in America suffer from work overload. This number was a 14% increase from 2013.

With document creation tools, you can cut the time your law firm spends on creating documents in half. This frees up time for you to do more important tasks such as meeting with clients and working on your cases.

Moreover, you can spend less money hiring individuals to draft documents if you automate your processes.

Since legal expenses can add up, there are some clients who try to save money by using online document preparation tools to draft their own documents. This way, law firms won’t have to charge them for the hours spent drafting the document.

However, this process is inadvisable and increases the chance of document errors. You can assure your clients that you will spend your time on their case, not on preparing documents.

Catch Up With Your Competition

If your law firm isn’t implementing automation yet, you’re already falling behind.

Lawyers at leading law firms only spend about 4% of their time reviewing documents. In fact, technology today is replacing about 2% of a lawyer’s work every year. The reason for this: the software revolution.

Starting in the 2000s, technology made it possible for lawyers to automate some legal tasks.

Today, automated technology is the new future for up and coming law students. It allows lawyers to handle more cases at a lower cost. It helps make legal services less expensive and more accessible to the average client.

Create Templates to Reuse

Document automation saves you time by allowing you to reuse templates. This way, you don’t need to spend your time re-creating documents.

Prevent Expensive Mistakes

Many times when lawyers draft documents, they use the last template they created and modify it for a new client.

However, this method has a high risk of error. It can be easy to accidentally forget important information. It is also possible you accidentally include information from the existing template that doesn’t belong.

In the legal world, mistakes can not only cost you money, but they can be detrimental to your client and they can hurt your reputation.

With document automation, you can reduce the risk of error and spend less time reviewing documents.

This leads to more satisfied clients which can get you positive online reviews. In fact, 88% of people trust reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend or family member. Better reviews can get you more clients.

Increased Compliance

By automating document creation, you can control and customize documents down to the smallest details. When it comes to complicated legal documents, every detail matters for your client’s case.

How to Implement Document Automation

If you’re interested in implementing document automation for your law firm, you might be wondering where to start.

We suggest you start thinking about what processes you can automate. Ask yourself what processes you are spending countless hours on. Draft an estimate of how much of your budget you can save if you automate these tasks.

Another tip is to automate tasks one at a time. You might want to do everything at once to increase efficiency, however, you need time to learn about document automation and how to use it effectively.

We suggest you consider training so that your firm is familiar with the software process.

Choosing the Right Software

There are many different options when it comes to choosing an automation software product. You want a tool that is easy to use and leads to a higher productivity for your workplace.

We recommend HotDocs software. In fact, HotDocs software can reduce your drafting time by 70%. It’s user-friendly, and you can use it with Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF.

Is Document Automation Right for Me?

Interested in learning how document automation can benefit you? Book a consultation today to learn how REAL Automation Solutions can help your firm.

Read our blog for more tips and advice.