According to the 2016 Evers Legal Career Satisfaction Report, 51% of in-house counsel responded that “stress” is the most challenging aspect of their job- which can most likely be due to increasing workloads and pressure legal teams have.
However, legal teams regardless of their budgets can find tools that address their needs and challenges. The burgeoning legal tech market offers many innovative automation tools that are designed to help legal departments cope up with work pressures.
In this post, we explore 4 ways legal departments can benefit from automation tools and improve their workflows and reduce the pressure of increasing workloads.
Mitigating risks proactively
Automatic checks and balances are one of the core components of many workflow automation tools. Cutting-edge legal tech companies offer automation solutions with built in safeguards that promote risk mitigation. For an instance, by automating contract creation, businesses can draft their own legal agreements in accordance to industry standards. This incorporates due diligence into contract formation instead of making it a separate task.
By utilising automation tools for contract drafting, you’ll never leave out important provisions and you will always be aware of current best practices while ensuring compliance. What’s more, with automation tools, you can schedule tasks and set alerts to complete them. As you will be notified of due tasks through customisable reminders, you and your colleagues can stay on track and never have to miss deadlines.
Organising tasks better
With automation tools, organisation is inherently part of the process— not an afterthought. When carrying out tasks, you can organise and synchronise all aspects that accompany a large volume of projects. Real-time organisation eliminates time-wasting administrative steps that typically need to be executed either before beginning a project or after its completion.
Automation tools come in handy when there is a need to organise and synchronise all aspects that accompany a large volume of projects.
Make accurate decisions
With automation tools, you can centralise process flows- creating a central hub for all aspects related to contract, entity, claim and litigation management etc. through centralisation, you can provide the business with greater accessibility while setting access rights to ensure tasks are carried out by the relevant people and confidential information is protected.
Having all facets related to legal functions in one place increases visibility, gives better control, saves time, promotes organisation, and reduces stress. For example, automating contract management processes allows users to quickly manage the entire life cycle of a contract, from creation and review to approval and execution. All steps crucial to contract administration are accessible in one place, making it easy for paralegals, GCs and CFOs to make accurate decisions quickly.
Focus on value delivering work
Workflow automation tools are designed to streamline processes. By automating tasks, you will be able to spend more time on substantive, high-value work. If you never feel like there are not enough hours in the day, or your “to do list” is constantly growing, workflow automation tools can eliminate many productivity-draining administrative concerns that get in the way of your business.
Not only does this save you time, but it also saves you money. Automating workflows ensure all tasks, no matter how big or small, are accomplished efficiently.
There is no doubt that automation tools empower legal department to deliver value to the organisations while improving productivity. The key is to identity your needs and challenges and implement a tool that addresses them without you having to exceed your budget.
Wondering how you can adopt automation tools to better manage the workload at your legal department? In the “Digital Transformation for Legal Departments” whitepaper, we explore the benefits of digitisation and 8 steps you can take to implement tech in your legal department. Download it today!
