Automation in Mind? I’d Start with Sales
If you have an automation or digital transformation agenda, a Sales project is an excellent place to start. Here’s why.
...Advanced automation features
Advanced automation features
About Charles Drayson
Charles is a UK lawyer who has used document automation for 20 years. He has worked for large law firms, corporate legal teams, and has automated legal and non-legal documents. He writes for Legito to share his passion for using automation to get work done. “I get a kick out of creating good content and seeing it used repeatedly and reliably by colleagues without fuss and bother”.
Advanced automation features
Charles Drayson
Aug 30 · 5 min read
Charles Drayson
Aug 30 · 5 min read
Comparing automation solutions is tricky if you don’t know what the more advanced features will do or whether you need them. Is it likely that you would use only the basic features, and anything else means paying for complexity and bloat that you don’t need? The assessment is harder if this is the organisation’s first deployment of an automation solution. A demo is good, but each vendor will run a demo that looks slick.
Comparing automation solutions is tricky if you don’t know what the more advanced features will do or whether you need them. Is it likely that you would use only the basic features, and anything else means paying for complexity and bloat that you don’t need? The assessment is harder if this is the organisation’s first deployment of an automation solution. A demo is good, but each vendor will run a demo that looks slick.
ADVANCED FEATURES – AM I JUST ADDING UNNECESSARY COMPLEXITY AND COST?
ADVANCED FEATURES – AM I JUST ADDING UNNECESSARY COMPLEXITY AND COST?
Successful projects create a demand for more. Most vendors (including Legito) advise starting with a simple project and then building incrementally. Projects which begin with large, ambitious rollouts carry risk. The first project is usually a success, unless an organisation has bought something completely unsuitable. Unfortunately, some organisations find it hard to increase adoption after the first project. What will you find when it’s time to take off the water-wings and swim in the deep end?
If you decided to invest in automation, it’s probable that some of your needs were not simple. Organisations are messy. Departments want different things. For every process, there are exceptions. You might have a standard document broadly suitable for most occasions but ideally suited to almost none. You map out a process, and then someone changes it, or you find that people are not following policies. If you over-simplify the solution, your colleagues will not use it, find ways round it, or complain loudly that it doesn’t work.
Successful projects create a demand for more. Most vendors (including Legito) advise starting with a simple project and then building incrementally. Projects which begin with large, ambitious rollouts carry risk. The first project is usually a success, unless an organisation has bought something completely unsuitable. Unfortunately, some organisations find it hard to increase adoption after the first project. What will you find when it’s time to take off the water-wings and swim in the deep end?
If you decided to invest in automation, it’s probable that some of your needs were not simple. Organisations are messy. Departments want different things. For every process, there are exceptions. You might have a standard document broadly suitable for most occasions but ideally suited to almost none. You map out a process, and then someone changes it, or you find that people are not following policies. If you over-simplify the solution, your colleagues will not use it, find ways round it, or complain loudly that it doesn’t work.
YOU THINK YOU ASKED ALL THE STAKEHOLDERS ABOUT THEIR REQUIREMENTS, AND, AFTER YOU BUY THE SOLUTION, YOU FIND THEY ASK FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
YOU THINK YOU ASKED ALL THE STAKEHOLDERS ABOUT THEIR REQUIREMENTS, AND, AFTER YOU BUY THE SOLUTION, YOU FIND THEY ASK FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Pareto Principle
This is why, sooner or later, you will want advanced features. The Pareto Principle still works – you will get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the features, but there are three more factors to consider:
- It’s hard to predict which features will form the 20% delivering most of the benefit.
- As you expand across the enterprise, each department might depend on different features.
- People who get good at developing solutions using Legito don’t want to stop at 80% – believe me, it’s addictive, and you will want more.
It’s like buying a car. I still remember cars without electric windows – we thought it was mad that some people would pay extra money to save the effort of winding down a window by hand. Remember manual chokes to get engines started? They were not exactly complex, but none of us looked back after electronic ignition. When cars first had air conditioning, it seemed extravagant. As for heated steering wheels, why would anyone need one? But, the driving experience with all those features is fundamentally different from the experience of the sort of cars I first drove as a teenager. There’s another similarity with buying software solutions: if you buy something basic, it might be impossible to retrofit the features you need – you have to buy again (and write off the investment in the first solution). For the manufacturers, it was hard to upgrade legacy models to compete with new modern designs.
Next-generation automation solutions compared to legacy solutions are, like modern cars, easier to use and more amenable to wide adoption by colleagues who are increasingly intolerant of mediocre technology.
What are the advanced features that make the difference?
Pareto Principle
This is why, sooner or later, you will want advanced features. The Pareto Principle still works – you will get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the features, but there are three more factors to consider:
- It’s hard to predict which features will form the 20% delivering most of the benefit.
- As you expand across the enterprise, each department might depend on different features.
- People who get good at developing solutions using Legito don’t want to stop at 80% – believe me, it’s addictive, and you will want more.
It’s like buying a car. I still remember cars without electric windows – we thought it was mad that some people would pay extra money to save the effort of winding down a window by hand. Remember manual chokes to get engines started? They were not exactly complex, but none of us looked back after electronic ignition. When cars first had air conditioning, it seemed extravagant. As for heated steering wheels, why would anyone need one? But, the driving experience with all those features is fundamentally different from the experience of the sort of cars I first drove as a teenager.
There’s another similarity with buying software solutions: if you buy something basic, it might be impossible to retrofit the features you need – you have to buy again (and write off the investment in the first solution). For the manufacturers, it was hard to upgrade legacy models to compete with new modern designs.
Next-generation automation solutions compared to legacy solutions are, like modern cars, easier to use and more amenable to wide adoption by colleagues who are increasingly intolerant of mediocre technology.
What are the advanced features that make the difference?
#1 No code development
I liked writing code using the first generation of document automation solutions. It was satisfying to get it right. But, I was one of those who also liked programming as a kid, and I relished the challenge. If you want your subject experts to build a solution for their teams, you could look around for people who also like messing around with code.
Here’s the problem: not many people fall into that category, and even if they do, not many organisations want to pay their key staff to mess around dabbling in code just because it has some esoteric appeal. They want their lawyers to use their legal drafting skills. They want their HR professionals thinking about people-friendly processes. They want their procurement teams focused on delivering value.
#2 Workflow
Many organisations who bought the first-generation solutions were surprised to find that the solutions generated a document and then did nothing else. The data used to create a document was mostly discarded or useless. The documents were no less and no more useful than a simple Word file. Everything else happened by email. Have your colleagues reviewed the document? No idea – email them. How many replies are you waiting for? No idea – trawl your sent items folder and see if you’ve had replies. Maybe create a list in a notepad and tick them off as they arrive. Is your document waiting for approval from someone who is on annual leave? You will need workflow. Do you have the budget and bandwidth to buy a workflow solution and integrate it with the document automation tool? Much better to have them in the same tool.
#3 Dashboards
If you deploy an automated solution, you probably have more than a few work items to get processed. After the solution has been running for a while, you will want to manage the workload. You will want visibility of current work. You will want to retrieve information from work processed months ago.
#4 Customisation
It’s better to have one solution that can be used across the whole enterprise, rather than each department buying its own solution. Each department might not care, but each department might not have the autonomy to fly solo on such things. However, each department will have a different requirement and a different view on your organisation’s world. That’s why you need to be able to customise. Customising a solution is more than just adding a logo and being able to select a colour scheme for the screens. True customisation means recognising that each team uses different data, different reports, and different processes. Moreover, they might want to separate one from another. The HR team does not want employee records accessible across the organisation. On the other hand, HR might want to roll out some processes (annual leave requests, new joiner processes) across all teams. This level of customisation requires software designed to be enterprise-wide.
#5 Digital signatures
Many documents need to be signed: contracts, purchase orders, job offers, approvals, audits. If they need to be signed by more than one person, you might need to specify the order in which they get signed. In many situations, you might need to verify that a signature is genuinely applied by the person named. It might not be good enough to copy and paste a GIF image taken from your scanned hand-written signature. Signing documents the old-fashioned way is a nuisance, time consuming and increasingly it makes you look old-fashioned. Since Covid, digital signatures have dramatically increased. In my work as a lawyer, I rarely see documents signed using hand-written ‘counterparts’ scanned and emailed. If a document is to be digitally signed, generate the document in a way that is natively ready for digital signature, and integrate the workflow with a digital signature solution. It’s easier if you can do all this in one tool.
#6 Data mining
Your organisation’s total document store contains valuable data that could provide insight into your business that is available from no other source. Litigators have been looking for ways to scrutinise documents using e-discovery tools. Mercifully, there are more beneficial reasons to look back at your documents to see what you can find. That task is easier if you keep digital records about each document. Inevitably, you might want information in the future that you did not anticipate when the document was first created. The tools to extract useful information from documents and processes are starting to deliver additional value beyond the obvious automation benefits.
#7 Who knows what’s coming?
It’s a trite observation to say solutions are, in general, becoming more sophisticated. You could wait for the next new thing, but there will always be something new coming, and you might never get started. The better strategy is to buy a solution with a history of developing new features, regularly – it’s the most reliable assurance that the solution will not drift out of date.
#1 No code development
I liked writing code using the first generation of document automation solutions. It was satisfying to get it right. But, I was one of those who also liked programming as a kid, and I relished the challenge. If you want your subject experts to build a solution for their teams, you could look around for people who also like messing around with code.
Here’s the problem: not many people fall into that category, and even if they do, not many organisations want to pay their key staff to mess around dabbling in code just because it has some esoteric appeal. They want their lawyers to use their legal drafting skills. They want their HR professionals thinking about people-friendly processes. They want their procurement teams focused on delivering value.
#2 Workflow
Many organisations who bought the first-generation solutions were surprised to find that the solutions generated a document and then did nothing else. The data used to create a document was mostly discarded or useless. The documents were no less and no more useful than a simple Word file. Everything else happened by email. Have your colleagues reviewed the document? No idea – email them. How many replies are you waiting for? No idea – trawl your sent items folder and see if you’ve had replies. Maybe create a list in a notepad and tick them off as they arrive. Is your document waiting for approval from someone who is on annual leave? You will need workflow. Do you have the budget and bandwidth to buy a workflow solution and integrate it with the document automation tool? Much better to have them in the same tool.
#3 Dashboards
If you deploy an automated solution, you probably have more than a few work items to get processed. After the solution has been running for a while, you will want to manage the workload. You will want visibility of current work. You will want to retrieve information from work processed months ago.
#4 Customisation
It’s better to have one solution that can be used across the whole enterprise, rather than each department buying its own solution. Each department might not care, but each department might not have the autonomy to fly solo on such things. However, each department will have a different requirement and a different view on your organisation’s world. That’s why you need to be able to customise. Customising a solution is more than just adding a logo and being able to select a colour scheme for the screens. True customisation means recognising that each team uses different data, different reports, and different processes. Moreover, they might want to separate one from another. The HR team does not want employee records accessible across the organisation. On the other hand, HR might want to roll out some processes (annual leave requests, new joiner processes) across all teams. This level of customisation requires software designed to be enterprise-wide.
#5 Digital signatures
Many documents need to be signed: contracts, purchase orders, job offers, approvals, audits. If they need to be signed by more than one person, you might need to specify the order in which they get signed. In many situations, you might need to verify that a signature is genuinely applied by the person named. It might not be good enough to copy and paste a GIF image taken from your scanned hand-written signature. Signing documents the old-fashioned way is a nuisance, time consuming and increasingly it makes you look old-fashioned. Since Covid, digital signatures have dramatically increased. In my work as a lawyer, I rarely see documents signed using hand-written ‘counterparts’ scanned and emailed. If a document is to be digitally signed, generate the document in a way that is natively ready for digital signature, and integrate the workflow with a digital signature solution. It’s easier if you can do all this in one tool.
#6 Data mining
Your organisation’s total document store contains valuable data that could provide insight into your business that is available from no other source. Litigators have been looking for ways to scrutinise documents using e-discovery tools. Mercifully, there are more beneficial reasons to look back at your documents to see what you can find. That task is easier if you keep digital records about each document. Inevitably, you might want information in the future that you did not anticipate when the document was first created. The tools to extract useful information from documents and processes are starting to deliver additional value beyond the obvious automation benefits.
#7 Who knows what’s coming?
It’s a trite observation to say solutions are, in general, becoming more sophisticated. You could wait for the next new thing, but there will always be something new coming, and you might never get started. The better strategy is to buy a solution with a history of developing new features, regularly – it’s the most reliable assurance that the solution will not drift out of date.
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Customer wish-lists
Customer wish-lists
Aug 25 · 2 min read
Yesterday, I wrote a summary of the excellent customer present from Telia at the PowerUp 2022 conference. Over the years, I have heard many organisations discuss their wish-list for solutions. It’s remarkable how diverse organisations have similar requests. That’s a good thing. It makes it viable to build solutions that work across multiple sectors and teams.
1. Automate the production of documents
Document automation (‘document assembly’, as it’s sometimes called) is the starting point for most projects. Some solutions do nothing other than document automation, and still deliver benefits. Building software to automate document generation is more difficult than it looks. It’s easy to do basic things, like replacing placeholders with names or similar data. You can do that with mail-merge in Word.
That’s OK for standard documents, but creating tailored documents is much better. Tailored documents have more customisation – the reader wouldn’t guess they come from an automated solution. The degree of customisation requires more advanced software, which is rarely available in enterprise software that doesn’t have Legito’s focus on document-orientated processes.
2. Save time spent on repetitive work
Saving time on repeat work used to mean using fewer people to get work done, to save costs. These days, during a significant labour shortage, it means getting work done despite a lack of people, especially people with skills in demand. It also means looking after your people – they don’t want to spend time on dreary tasks.
3. Reduce human error
Humans make mistakes. We all do. Risk management, compliance procedures, and brand reputation are enhanced if we give people tools that help them do the right thing. Humans are bad at reading long policy documents, checking for mistakes, and remembering process details. Just because you get by without automation, doesn’t mean you have a sustainable process. In some markets, regulators expect to see technology to mitigate risk.
4. Systems must be intuitive for users
Solutions like Legito have two types of user. They begin with the users who will author the content, design the processes, and write the rules that influence documents and processes. Let’s call them ‘authors’. The rest are users who will rely on the solution to get work done – they most of the users. Ideally, your authors will be the people who have subject matter expertise in the relevant department. An intuitive solution places no barriers between the author and their content – no need for coding, an interface that gives easy access to tools, and making it easy for authors to see how their work is taking shape.
Intuitive solutions for other users are customised so users recognise how to get work done. HR users expect to see screens customised for HR processes. Procurement teams expect to see screens about sourcing. Real estate users expect to see screens about property.
5. Reduce cycle times for getting work done
The items listed above reduce the time to get work done (and done correctly first time). Self-service features make it easier for people to get what they need without waiting for help from specialist colleagues. Your subject matter experts should use their expertise to make self-service options that work for most people most of the time. Use Legito to lead users through the correct content and correct steps, so they aren’t tempted to use unauthorised short-cuts or skip important items.
Customer wish-lists
Aug 25 · 2 min read
Yesterday, I wrote a summary of the excellent customer present from Telia at the PowerUp 2022 conference. Over the years, I have heard many organisations discuss their wish-list for solutions. It’s remarkable how diverse organisations have similar requests. That’s a good thing. It makes it viable to build solutions that work across multiple sectors and teams.
1. Automate the production of documents
Document automation (‘document assembly’, as it’s sometimes called) is the starting point for most projects. Some solutions do nothing other than document automation, and still deliver benefits. Building software to automate document generation is more difficult than it looks. It’s easy to do basic things, like replacing placeholders with names or similar data. You can do that with mail-merge in Word.
That’s OK for standard documents, but creating tailored documents is much better. Tailored documents have more customisation – the reader wouldn’t guess they come from an automated solution. The degree of customisation requires more advanced software, which is rarely available in enterprise software that doesn’t have Legito’s focus on document-orientated processes.
2. Save time spent on repetitive work
Saving time on repeat work used to mean using fewer people to get work done, to save costs. These days, during a significant labour shortage, it means getting work done despite a lack of people, especially people with skills in demand. It also means looking after your people – they don’t want to spend time on dreary tasks.
3. Reduce human error
Humans make mistakes. We all do. Risk management, compliance procedures, and brand reputation are enhanced if we give people tools that help them do the right thing. Humans are bad at reading long policy documents, checking for mistakes, and remembering process details. Just because you get by without automation, doesn’t mean you have a sustainable process. In some markets, regulators expect to see technology to mitigate risk.
4. Systems must be intuitive for users
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Intuitive solutions for other users are customised so users recognise how to get work done. HR users expect to see screens customised for HR processes. Procurement teams expect to see screens about sourcing. Real estate users expect to see screens about property.
5. Reduce cycle times for getting work done
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Digital transformation with documents
Digital transformation with documents
About Charles Drayson
Charles is a UK lawyer who has used document automation for 20 years. He has worked for large law firms, corporate legal teams, and has automated legal and non-legal documents. He writes for Legito to share his passion for using automation to get work done. “I get a kick out of creating good content and seeing it used repeatedly and reliably by colleagues without fuss and bother”.
Digital transformation with documents
About Charles Drayson
Charles is a UK lawyer who has used document automation for 20 years. He has worked for large law firms, corporate legal teams, and has automated legal and non-legal documents. He writes for Legito to share his passion for using automation to get work done. “I get a kick out of creating good content and seeing it used repeatedly and reliably by colleagues without fuss and bother”.
Charles Drayson
Jul 26 · 3 min read
Charles Drayson
Jul 26 · 3 min read
Documents are awkward components of digital transformation.
You store them on digital media but, ultimately, they remain analogue materials for human consumption. Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence are as yet unable to extract full and reliable data from documents. Hell, you can put the same document in front of several humans and not even yield consistent interpretations of the content.
What can we do with those pesky documents in a quest to make things better?
Documents are awkward components of digital transformation.
You store them on digital media but, ultimately, they remain analogue materials for human consumption. Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence are as yet unable to extract full and reliable data from documents. Hell, you can put the same document in front of several humans and not even yield consistent interpretations of the content.
What can we do with those pesky documents in a quest to make things better?
Abandon documents that we don’t need
If a document exists to present digital data in human-readable form, keep the data and create a transient document on each occasion when it’s needed. Bank statements are a good example. Who needs years of bank statements if we can reconstruct a statement (probably with more insightful data) on demand from a digital record of transactions? The veracity of a digital record is easier to verify – documents are prone to fabrication. Document assembly tools are ideal for this.
Store documents with the data that spawned them
If you must keep a document, and if the document was generated automatically from machine-readable data (just about all high volume documents), make sure you store the data (or a link to it) with the document. Systems can then read the data rather than trying to reverse engineer the document. Insurance policies, mortgage documents, employment contracts, purchase orders – all fall into this category.
If a dispute arises, someone can verify the data tallies with the document on an exceptions basis. You also mitigate the risk of a document presenting ambiguous information – you can look back at the source to resolve discrepancies. It’s helpful to have a document management system that allows such files to be collocated.
Store documents with metadata
If you cannot link a document to machine-readable data that contains the same information, tag the document with clues about what it contains. Typical metadata could include the date of the document, the name of the author, the type of document, maybe a tag to describe a related project. This might be sufficient for most reporting purposes, and reduce the task of searching for specific documents when the occasion arises. Created metadata at the same time as the document – it’s harder to tag documents retrospectively (although some AI systems are good at that).
Limit the use of documents as the sole repository of information
This requires some discipline among the teams of prospective authors. They need to understand that using a document as the medium to record the product of their work could be the least efficient way to apply their efforts.
For example, a real estate agent could feasibly create a very pleasing document describing a client’s house, with photographs, plans and descriptions. How useful is that document for analysis by anything systematic (or to share with marketing agents)? Instead, have a taxonomy for describing houses (number of rooms, dimensions, plot size, etc) and for collating plans and photographs. Compile it digitally, and then use document assembly to render descriptive documents (with the added benefit of having documents that are consistent and meet the organisation branding). Lawyers should create more legal documents this way too.
Impose a screening process before assimilating ad hoc documents into a digital system
If you must have incoming documents that don’t fall into the categories above, you do at least need to safeguard your organisation with a few steps to keep a healthy document store. The exact steps will depend on your industry but think about compliance and safeguarding.
Before you accept a document, you might want to remind users about data protection (you might want to know if documents contain personal data), security classification, password protection (if documents have to be opened by someone without a password), or simply to check if this is the correct system to be storing such documents.
Build a process for the human-in-the-loop
If documents are for human consumption, build an automated business process that has a place for the human-in-the-loop. Don’t try to replicate the nuanced, sensitive, intuitive work that only humans do well. Provide a way for humans to participate and leave their mark. Workflow tools integrated with document automation are what you need.
Abandon documents that we don’t need
If a document exists to present digital data in human-readable form, keep the data and create a transient document on each occasion when it’s needed. Bank statements are a good example. Who needs years of bank statements if we can reconstruct a statement (probably with more insightful data) on demand from a digital record of transactions? The veracity of a digital record is easier to verify – documents are prone to fabrication. Document assembly tools are ideal for this.
Store documents with the data that spawned them
If you must keep a document, and if the document was generated automatically from machine-readable data (just about all high volume documents), make sure you store the data (or a link to it) with the document. Systems can then read the data rather than trying to reverse engineer the document. Insurance policies, mortgage documents, employment contracts, purchase orders – all fall into this category.
If a dispute arises, someone can verify the data tallies with the document on an exceptions basis. You also mitigate the risk of a document presenting ambiguous information – you can look back at the source to resolve discrepancies. It’s helpful to have a document management system that allows such files to be collocated.
Store documents with metadata
If you cannot link a document to machine-readable data that contains the same information, tag the document with clues about what it contains. Typical metadata could include the date of the document, the name of the author, the type of document, maybe a tag to describe a related project. This might be sufficient for most reporting purposes, and reduce the task of searching for specific documents when the occasion arises. Created metadata at the same time as the document – it’s harder to tag documents retrospectively (although some AI systems are good at that).
Limit the use of documents as the sole repository of information
This requires some discipline among the teams of prospective authors. They need to understand that using a document as the medium to record the product of their work could be the least efficient way to apply their efforts.
For example, a real estate agent could feasibly create a very pleasing document describing a client’s house, with photographs, plans and descriptions. How useful is that document for analysis by anything systematic (or to share with marketing agents)? Instead, have a taxonomy for describing houses (number of rooms, dimensions, plot size, etc) and for collating plans and photographs. Compile it digitally, and then use document assembly to render descriptive documents (with the added benefit of having documents that are consistent and meet the organisation branding). Lawyers should create more legal documents this way too.
Impose a screening process before assimilating ad hoc documents into a digital system
If you must have incoming documents that don’t fall into the categories above, you do at least need to safeguard your organisation with a few steps to keep a healthy document store. The exact steps will depend on your industry but think about compliance and safeguarding.
Before you accept a document, you might want to remind users about data protection (you might want to know if documents contain personal data), security classification, password protection (if documents have to be opened by someone without a password), or simply to check if this is the correct system to be storing such documents.
Build a process for the human-in-the-loop
If documents are for human consumption, build an automated business process that has a place for the human-in-the-loop. Don’t try to replicate the nuanced, sensitive, intuitive work that only humans do well. Provide a way for humans to participate and leave their mark. Workflow tools integrated with document automation are what you need.
More Industry Insights
Automation in Mind? I’d Start with Sales
If you have an automation or digital transformation agenda, a Sales project is an excellent place to start. Here’s why.
...Streamlining HR Processes with the Adoption of Legito
We promote Legito for enterprise-wide adoption, but organizations have to begin somewhere, and the HR team is invariably a good place to start.
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Digital transformation of back-office services critical to the delivery of financial services will be more heavily regulated than back-office servi...
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If you can deliver ROI while meeting business needs, it will be easier to command support. Before you build an ROI for Legito, take a free trial.<...
Metadata – a guide for non-techies
Legito provides enhanced features by using metadata. This is a guide to what metadata is and what it can do for you.
...Advanced automation features
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...Digital transformation with documents
Documents are awkward components of digital transformation. You store them on digital media but, ultimately, they remain analogue materials for hum...
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We’re back at our desks after meeting many great customers, partners and supporters at the Legito PowerUp 2022 conference. It was my first in-per...
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...Document automation: if it’s so good, why isn’t everyone using it?
How do you create a contract which contains all the necessary clauses in one document but none of the irrelevant ones?
...Implementing document automation: a few unexpected benefits
How do you create a contract which contains all the necessary clauses in one document but none of the irrelevant ones?
...Calculate Your Automation’s Return On Investment (ROI)
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Start Automating Now
Legito PowerUp 2022: Success Story – CLM & Document Automation in a Large Law Firm
Legito PowerUp 2022: Success Story – CLM & Document Automation in a Large Law Firm
If we are tempted to assume there is one solution to a problem, get fresh ideas by looking at the problem through the eyes of another culture, another country, or another continent.
Mauricio Jaramillo presented a case study from the largest law firm in Colombia, Gomez-Pinzon. Here’s a deliberate summary of a few sections from Mauricio’s presentation that are not what we usually hear from law firm case studies.
Mauricio described the core challenge like this: how do you persuade the partners of a successful law firm to embark on a digital transformation project to change legal services that had been working successfully for 30+ years? Gomez-Pinzon acknowledged that they did not merely intend to change the way they created documents – they were going to redesign legal practice.
Before deciding the projects to deliver digital transformation, Gomez-Pinzon started by changing how people would respond and adapt. It helped that their organisation attracted young legal professionals keen to build their careers using new technologies. Gomez-Pinzon spent time thinking about how to get people to change the way they thought about their work. Mauricio believed the success of digital transformation would depend on how people embraced it. After they got their colleagues behind the project, they could leave them to continue to build on each new technical innovation so that it did not stall after one project.
Gomez-Pinzon kicked off their document automation strategy with a remarkable project: Mauricio observed that auditors regularly ask law firms to report on legal matters for use in clients’ audits. When he explained the cumbersome procedures for responding to audit requests, the problem was visible, and it raises the question, why has nobody found a better way to handle it? It’s an ideal starting project: it solves a problem that is a recurring administrative nuisance that must be done correctly, and it’s a problem that vexed every team in the organisation. Get that right (and they did), and you open the door to enterprise-wide adoption of the technology for multiple teams.
Having successfully built a solution for audit reports, Mauricio described how Gomez-Pinzon moved to another solution that lawyers will recognise: they automated the production of due-diligence reports. If you’re a lawyer, you will know that DD reports are a joyless but important task in every corporate deal. If you’re not a lawyer, the interesting thing about automating DD reports is that they are not ‘standard’ – an automation solution has to span many variables because the reports cannot be over-simplified.
We thank Mauricio for travelling to Prague to share his experience. They started thinking about people. They built a solution that automated a task that was tedious for people, but a task that must be done correctly. That’s how they began a successful digital transformation.
FULL RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE
Charles Drayson
Legito's Chief Community Officer
After a few years of working for a prominent London law firm, I started to get comfortable in my practice area, and I stopped feeling like every project demanded knowledge I didn’t have. And then something happened: I travelled overseas to work on a legal project in the middle east.
I started to work in the same way I worked in London – and it didn’t go too well.
I remember a senior lawyer in a local firm making arguments I had not heard before, and using negotiations in a style I had not experienced. I annoyed my counterparts by trying to do things the way they were done in London, and made no progress until I let go my narrow outlook.
In the years that followed, I was fortunate to work in multiple countries and to spend long periods in some of them. I started to enjoy the experience of different business cultures and legal traditions while observing that we share many of the same challenges.
Legito PowerUp 2022: Success Story – CLM & Document Automation in a Large Law Firm
If we are tempted to assume there is one solution to a problem, get fresh ideas by looking at the problem through the eyes of another culture, another country, or another continent.
Mauricio Jaramillo presented a case study from the largest law firm in Colombia, Gomez-Pinzon. Here’s a deliberate summary of a few sections from Mauricio’s presentation that are not what we usually hear from law firm case studies.
Mauricio described the core challenge like this: how do you persuade the partners of a successful law firm to embark on a digital transformation project to change legal services that had been working successfully for 30+ years? Gomez-Pinzon acknowledged that they did not merely intend to change the way they created documents – they were going to redesign legal practice.
Before deciding the projects to deliver digital transformation, Gomez-Pinzon started by changing how people would respond and adapt. It helped that their organisation attracted young legal professionals keen to build their careers using new technologies. Gomez-Pinzon spent time thinking about how to get people to change the way they thought about their work. Mauricio believed the success of digital transformation would depend on how people embraced it. After they got their colleagues behind the project, they could leave them to continue to build on each new technical innovation so that it did not stall after one project.
Gomez-Pinzon kicked off their document automation strategy with a remarkable project: Mauricio observed that auditors regularly ask law firms to report on legal matters for use in clients’ audits. When he explained the cumbersome procedures for responding to audit requests, the problem was visible, and it raises the question, why has nobody found a better way to handle it? It’s an ideal starting project: it solves a problem that is a recurring administrative nuisance that must be done correctly, and it’s a problem that vexed every team in the organisation. Get that right (and they did), and you open the door to enterprise-wide adoption of the technology for multiple teams.
Having successfully built a solution for audit reports, Mauricio described how Gomez-Pinzon moved to another solution that lawyers will recognise: they automated the production of due-diligence reports. If you’re a lawyer, you will know that DD reports are a joyless but important task in every corporate deal. If you’re not a lawyer, the interesting thing about automating DD reports is that they are not ‘standard’ – an automation solution has to span many variables because the reports cannot be over-simplified.
We thank Mauricio for travelling to Prague to share his experience. They started thinking about people. They built a solution that automated a task that was tedious for people, but a task that must be done correctly. That’s how they began a successful digital transformation.
FULL RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE
Charles Drayson
Legito's Chief Community Officer
After a few years of working for a prominent London law firm, I started to get comfortable in my practice area, and I stopped feeling like every project demanded knowledge I didn’t have. And then something happened: I travelled overseas to work on a legal project in the middle east.
I started to work in the same way I worked in London – and it didn’t go too well.
I remember a senior lawyer in a local firm making arguments I had not heard before, and using negotiations in a style I had not experienced. I annoyed my counterparts by trying to do things the way they were done in London, and made no progress until I let go my narrow outlook.
In the years that followed, I was fortunate to work in multiple countries and to spend long periods in some of them. I started to enjoy the experience of different business cultures and legal traditions while observing that we share many of the same challenges.
Start Automating Now
Self-service for shared service centres
Self-service for shared service centres
May 5 · 2 min read
I spent some (great) years in an organisation that served HR professionals. Shared service centres of large organisations were important customers. They demanded self-service tools so employees could book their own holidays, change their payroll details, submit expenses, that sort of thing.
I worry that ‘self-service’ sounds like something negative – probably because we have suffered from self-service checkouts in retail outlets where it feels like a way for the retailer to save money and have us do a task that is better done by the retail staff. The last point is critical: the person best equipped to process your shopping basket at the checkout is a shop assistant.
Self-service for shared service centres
Self-service for shared service centres offers something more empowering. If I want to change my bank details for my salary or book a holiday, I know what I want to do. And, I’d like it done now. Self-service offers me on-demand, customised, confidential support. If I work in a sales team and I’ve worked hard to get a prospect to the stage of being ready to sign a deal, I’d rather not hand the task to the legal team and wait for my turn in the queue, especially if they don’t look after my hard-won customer.
If I just made a job offer for a vacancy I need to fill now, and I’ve found the best person for the role, I want to get the paperwork done now, and I want the candidate to feel they are joining a high-performing team. I might be embarrassed if I wait for the HR team to send out forms to collect information the applicant already provided in their resume.
Get it done right
I like self-service, but it has to be done right. Recently, I was involved in a residential property sale in the UK. The law firm offered a computerised system that promised to keep things moving and keep me up to date. The first batch of documents from that system included a pile of forms to be completed. Most of the forms contained the same set of fields: my name, my email address, the law firm’s reference number, the address of the property, and similar details of the transaction. They already had those details, and yet I had to enter them multiple times in different forms. Moreover, they sent PDFs which I could not edit – so most people would complete have to print them and fill them in manuscript. Doubtless, when the forms arrive back at the law firm, a secretary or paralegal would re-key the data (perhaps with errors).
WHY
They already had all that data: they emailed their forms to me! Why didn’t they use document automation to pre-populate the forms? Better still, why didn’t they pre-populate a questionnaire and leave me to provide missing information, and have the software generate all their forms? As far I can see, their computer system does nothing more than automate the dispatch of the same analogue documents that they were probably using years ago.
Self-service done right looks like this:
- Collect data from the person (or system) best equipped to provide it – and use a medium that is designed for the task
- Build a system that flows the data to wherever it is needed (keeping it as structured data in digital form)
- Add intelligence to compute extra data, validate the data, predict what the user might want
- Don’t add unnecessary analogue steps to a digital system: for example, don’t add human approval steps if the system is capable of calculating whether requisite criteria are satisfied – humans are not good at rubber-stamping computed results
- Provide feedback: tell the user what has been achieved and what comes next
- Monitor the manual interventions to learn where the system is failing to meet user needs (telephone calls and emails to helpdesks, escalations to managers, submissions from channels other than self-service)
This manner of intelligent automation is easier if one solution can handle all the component features. In case you’re wondering, Legito can do that.
Self-service for shared service centres
May 5 · 2 min read
I spent some (great) years in an organisation that served HR professionals. Shared service centres of large organisations were important customers. They demanded self-service tools so employees could book their own holidays, change their payroll details, submit expenses, that sort of thing.
I worry that ‘self-service’ sounds like something negative – probably because we have suffered from self-service checkouts in retail outlets where it feels like a way for the retailer to save money and have us do a task that is better done by the retail staff. The last point is critical: the person best equipped to process your shopping basket at the checkout is a shop assistant.
Self-service for shared service centres
Self-service for shared service centres offers something more empowering. If I want to change my bank details for my salary or book a holiday, I know what I want to do. And, I’d like it done now. Self-service offers me on-demand, customised, confidential support. If I work in a sales team and I’ve worked hard to get a prospect to the stage of being ready to sign a deal, I’d rather not hand the task to the legal team and wait for my turn in the queue, especially if they don’t look after my hard-won customer.
If I just made a job offer for a vacancy I need to fill now, and I’ve found the best person for the role, I want to get the paperwork done now, and I want the candidate to feel they are joining a high-performing team. I might be embarrassed if I wait for the HR team to send out forms to collect information the applicant already provided in their resume.
Get it done right
I like self-service, but it has to be done right. Recently, I was involved in a residential property sale in the UK. The law firm offered a computerised system that promised to keep things moving and keep me up to date. The first batch of documents from that system included a pile of forms to be completed. Most of the forms contained the same set of fields: my name, my email address, the law firm’s reference number, the address of the property, and similar details of the transaction. They already had those details, and yet I had to enter them multiple times in different forms. Moreover, they sent PDFs which I could not edit – so most people would complete have to print them and fill them in manuscript. Doubtless, when the forms arrive back at the law firm, a secretary or paralegal would re-key the data (perhaps with errors).
? WHY
They already had all that data: they emailed their forms to me! Why didn’t they use document automation to pre-populate the forms? Better still, why didn’t they pre-populate a questionnaire and leave me to provide missing information, and have the software generate all their forms? As far I can see, their computer system does nothing more than automate the dispatch of the same analogue documents that they were probably using years ago.
Self-service done right looks like this:
- Collect data from the person (or system) best equipped to provide it – and use a medium that is designed for the task
- Build a system that flows the data to wherever it is needed (keeping it as structured data in digital form)
- Add intelligence to compute extra data, validate the data, predict what the user might want
- Don’t add unnecessary analogue steps to a digital system: for example, don’t add human approval steps if the system is capable of calculating whether requisite criteria are satisfied – humans are not good at rubber-stamping computed results
- Provide feedback: tell the user what has been achieved and what comes next
- Monitor the manual interventions to learn where the system is failing to meet user needs (telephone calls and emails to helpdesks, escalations to managers, submissions from channels other than self-service)
This manner of intelligent automation is easier if one solution can handle all the component features. In case you’re wondering, Legito can do that.
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...No code / Low code – what’s the fuss about?
Some automation software still requires you to use code (or a code-like script) to build a solution that can be deployed in an organisation. The sc...
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Contracts tend to have defined terms, and the definitions are often grouped in one place. When reading a contract, it’s helpful to read the defin...
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We asked our consulting team how they find new colleagues to be part of our implementation team. The suggestions look like tests – but don’t pr...
Implementing Legito – who to pick / who to avoid
You need the right person to make your implementation successful. Here are some traits that make a good project representative. Someone happy to pi...
Is it the right time to invest in automation?
It used to be said: “Better, cheaper, faster – pick any two.” Now we can improve all three vectors at the same time. Historically, organisati...
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