Automation

Documents-(1)

Breaking down Avvoka’s Use Cases

, , , , ,

(3 minute read)

The best method of encouraging a prospective client to adopt any new technology or product is through marketing its ‘use cases’. A use case demonstrates a specific manner in which a product can be used. This isn’t exclusive to B2B software tools! Take something as simple as Apple’s iPhone – iPhone advertisements show the different ways the product can be used by an individual, ranging from the use of Siri to making movies. In other words, the different use cases are being highlighted.

Over the next few blog posts, we’ll be sharing detailed breakdowns of our ultimate automation guide. So what’s the purpose of this week’s article? It’s to highlight how our product can be used through use cases. Here’s a few different ways Avvoka is used by our clients:

Below, we’ll go into more detail about each of these, covering how the use case is achieved and why it’s helpful.

1. Precedent Automation

Automation is mostly about efficiency. Automation helps users to create documents faster and makes sure they are created perfectly every time. It simplifies the manual process of creating the first draft of a document. You only have the easy task of answering a questionnaire, and this pulls data to customise your document as desired.

How?

Avvoka is a truly no-code platform, unlike other legacy tools. With Avvoka, document automation is visual, intuitive and denoted by different colours. As a result of Avvoka’s simplicity of use, users do not need to know any coding or markup languages to automate their documents. With Avvoka, you can still handle the most complex agreements imaginable, but it isn’t complicated to do so.

Why?

  • Quick and accurate drafting: Instead of manually filling out the square bracketed fields, lawyers simply need to fill out a questionnaire which requires each piece of information to be typed once. This has massive efficiency gains as more time can be devoted to other tasks.
  • No double data entry: Most commercial documents are completed using data saved elsewhere like in term sheets, excel files or other software. A well-structured automated document can automatically import such data from elsewhere in Avoka. Automatic data importation means less double-entry of data, fewer mistakes and better productivity.
  • Instant updates: If your commercials change unexpectedly, you can update the questionnaire you used to create your document. This automatically and immediately produces an updated version of the document.
  • Structured precedent bank: Using Avvoka automatically translates your documents into structured data. With Avvoka, you, by design, maintain easy access to your crucial commercial data and can easily view and gain insights about the data attached to your documents.
  • User self-service: Business users can assemble automated documents themselves quickly, safely and auditably.  Legal involvement can be reserved for only where drafts go ‘off-piste’. Self-service limits internal back-and-forth and leads to quicker deal negotiations and less stressful lawyering!
prededent automation

2. Generating entire suites of related documents

Using Avvoka’s “related document” feature, you can create multiple documents that share the same key datapoints. For example, you can use the data contained within your loan facility to generate your corporate authorities automatically. With Avvoka, you can create document summary sheets, internal review forms, and more without rekeying the same information multiple times.

How?

The related document feature works by “paper-clipping” together multiple templates on the Avvoka system. When someone drafts a document on Avvoka, the questionnaire questions relevant to multiple documents are only asked once. The answers to these multi-purpose questions are then automatically used to populate all relevant documents.

Why?

  • Save time: Rather than creating multiple documents individually, you can complete them all at the same time. 
  • Avoid errors: Instead of rekeying the same data for multiple documents, the user only answers one multi-purpose question for related documents.
  • Store documents together: On the Avvoka platform, documents are then linked together so you can always find documents that relate to one another.
  • Trigger document creation based on the content of other documents: Don’t want to have to manually create the next set of matter-related documents that are required every time a particular phase of a transaction has been completed? Using Avvoka’s workflow feature, you can trigger the creation of a related document based on the contents or lifecycle stage of another document. For example, where a loan amount is over a certain amount, you might want to automatically generate a summary document to be sent to risk and compliance. 
RELATED DOCUMENTS

3. Automating ways of working and processes

Avvoka’s workflow functionality allows you to build workflow sequences and approval workflows. 

How?

Workflow and approvals are core to Avvoka documents. They are created in the automated template builder and allow users to create workflows such as ‘add finance user X if the loan principal amount is above Y’. Alternatively, a workflow might be contingent upon a document ‘state’. With Avvoka workflows, users can create a sequence of events set in motion once the template is created, hits another lifecycle stage or has a particular property. For example, with Avvoka workflows, you could prevent the document from being sent to a counterparty or signed if a particular approval remained outstanding.

Why?

  • Save time: When typically collaborating with colleagues over a document, it is manually emailed back and forth, which uses up valuable time particularly with a deadline on the horizon. Using Avvoka’s workflow, actions can be triggered when the document has been created, ensuring a seamless collaborative experience.
  • Increase financial value: Speed is imperative when moving in today’s fast-paced business world. Workflow automation saves time as discussed above and streamlines the execution of contracts, allowing you to move faster as a legal team, and generate more revenue. 
  • Automate approval requests: If only a junior member of your team is assigned the document, sending or signing of the document can be blocked until a particular approver has OKed the draft.
  • Get external input: You can add external parties to documents, either ad hoc or in an automated way, to conveniently collect their drafting inputs and comments.

4. Mass generating similar documents

Most commercial transactions involve drafting a few editions of the same document type that feature differentiated commercial information (i.e. board resolutions). Due to this, there is real value in being able to produce multiple permutations of the same documents with differentiated data inputs for each. Avvoka helps customers achieve this through its mass document generation functionality.

How?

Users can download their Avvoka questionnaires as Excel spreadsheets. Once the Excel file questions have been answered using the information required to draft your batch of differentiated documents, the Excel file can then be re-uploaded to Avvoka. Once the Excel file has been processed, Avvoka will now have your 10s, 100s or 1000s of bespoke agreements automatically drafted and stored, based on the information contained within the Excel file.

Why?

  • Save time: Unlike creating dozens of slightly differentiated variants of the same document manually for hours on end, using Avvoka’s mass-generate feature will help you achieve the same result in minutes.
  • More time for complex work: Teams with more time can work on complex and high-value tasks. More high-impact work empowers employees to add more value to clients. You’ll increase your organisation’s efficiency, and your teams won’t be stuck doing the more repetitive, large volume of work.
  • Use instant updates to change information: If the deal information changes across dozens of documents, instead of having to manually go through each one to update the information, all you need to do is update the columns in the Excel sheet and upload it to Avvoka. 
  • Organise and analyse your mass generated documents: By producing multiple variants of the same or similar documents, you can get to grips with Avvoka’s document analytics feature. The two key benefits are that you can organise the documents by a particular attribute or analyse which bits in each document are being negotiated over the most to produce a market standard version of the specific document.
mass generation of docs

Read more from Avvoka: 

By:  Raam Jeganathan
Screen Shot 2021-01-15 at 11.18.56 AM

Avvoka Version 2.0: The future of document automation is here

, , , , , ,

(4 minute read)

Avvoka 2.0 is officially here! We’re so excited to introduce the newest version of Avvoka, something that everyone on the team has worked incredibly hard on for many months. We’ve been collaborating closely with our existing clients to implement their feedback and expand the functionality of the platform to make sure that they can get to “yes” even faster.

There are two key areas of the system that we’ve been focusing our efforts on:

  1. Templating: This is where the magic happens! Templating is where you turn your standard form documents into automated templates using our no-code logic. You can also use our workflow builder and the related documents function to bring your offline processes online too.
  2. Editor: After you’ve created your automated template you can begin generating documents via the questionnaire. Then you can use the Avvoka editor to mark up the document, track your changes, collaborate with colleagues and negotiate with colleagues – all in one place.

We’ll use this article to highlight our top ten favourite changes to the system across these two areas of Avvoka Version 2.0 :

1. Automation Suggestions
2. Speed
3. Track Changes
4. Comments Filtering
5. Tasks
6. Clause Library
7. Version Tracking
8. Workflows
9. Analytics
10. Advanced Operations

You can watch the full trailer of Avvoka 2.0 on our Youtube channel.

1. Automation Suggestions and Error Scanning: Always get it right.

Even though templating on Avvoka is simple and intuitive, sometimes it’s still easy to make human mistakes in the logic of your automation. We’re introducing comprehensive scanning checks to help you spot and correct those errors easily.

Why? We brought in this change because we know that sometimes you need a helping hand to figure out how your automated document is operating, or how to reduce the length of your questionnaire while still asking the right questions. We are committed to continue making automation more intuitive and user-friendly!

2. Speed: Don’t let anything slow you down.

Avvoka Version 2.0 is 800 times faster. Yes, you read that right. While a 300-page agreement may have previously taken a little while to load, it now loads in less than five seconds.

Why?  Well, that one is easy. Avvoka is the best platform for automating the most complex documents. We wanted to make sure that we had the speed to match this claim. Avvoka has the speed to support you even with your most sophisticated documents.

3. Track Changes: Don’t miss anything.

While track changes has always been a feature on Avvoka, they have a new look. Instead of having to click on individual changes to see who made them, you can view them all in our brand new sidebar.

Why? We know that working in the editor needs to be flawless, and we want to ensure that the process of working in Avvoka is as close as possible to what our clients are used to. This leads to a smoother user experience and makes the contract review process much easier.

4. Comments Filtering: Collaborate and negotiate seamlessly.

You can now filter by internal and external comments as well as mentions, tasks, archived comments, and track changes.

Why? This update makes it easier to navigate through the comments on your documents, especially as our clients start to use Avvoka more and more to iterate back and forth on complex documents with both collaborators and counterparties. Also, at Avvoka, we have safeguards that ensure that you will never accidentally let an internal comment slip to the counterparty.

5. Tasks and Mentions: Supercharge your collaboration.

You have always been able to mention collaborators or counterparties in your comments to draw their attention to a specific issue, but now you can easily convert a mention into a specific assignment for them to complete. Say you want your colleague to create some bespoke drafting in one of your clauses, you can assign a task to them so that they know to complete it.

Users can see all tasks assigned to them and quickly make their way through their to-do list.

Why? Because contracting should be this easy. Rather than ping-ponging back and forth and sharing comments through emails and endless versions, you can work in one place where all versions of the document are automatically saved. This eliminates confusion and drastically speeds up the negotiation process.

6. Clause Library: Make your automation more powerful and easier to update.

On Avvoka, you can store your commonly used clauses in our clause library, and update them from there with a single click. 

Clause library also allows you to store commonly used clauses in one central location and to instantly update the same clause in multiple templates at once. This reduces the time you need to keep your precedents up-to-date.

The best part? You can add automation to your clause library clauses too, meaning that they are just as powerful as the clauses already in your individual templates.

Why? We know how important it is to our clients to be able to insert different variants of their most commonly used clauses. We’ve worked closely with them to make sure that this feature is what they need to ensure successful negotiation and document creation. We also know how important it is for our clients to be able to easily maintain and update certain clauses across all their templates; clause library allows you to do exactly that in one central location.

7. Keep track of every version of your documents: Stay in control.

Keep track of every version of your document in one place on Avvoka. Instead of email ping pong and working with multiple different versions of one document, you can keep your negotiations all in one place with a comprehensive audit log. You can trackback through your documents anytime and view historic versions to see what changed and when, and by who.

Why? Our clients now have full control and visibility of their documents and can conveniently monitor every single change. This feature improves the audit process and makes it much more efficient. Comparing documents and creating redlines has never been so simple!

8. Workflows: Bring your offline processes online.

Another area of the system that’s been improved in Avvoka Version 2.0 is the workflows function. You can now hinge a menu of actions on different triggers (like adding a document approved upon the initial creation of a given document). You can also block certain functions like e-signing or downloading a document until you a particular approval is granted, or invoke the creation of a specific document based whether certain commercial terms have been invoked in another document.

Is the deal value over a certain risk threshold? Automatically add a legal approver. Does an answer to the questionnaire set off red flags? Instantly create an approval request with further questions. With Avvoka 2.0 you can now create complex workflows in an easy and intuitive way). There are no limits to what you can achieve.

Why? From speaking to our clients we know how important it is to bring your offline processes online, and with our workflow builder, you can do just that.

9. Analytics: Generate valuable data insights.

With Avvoka 2.0 your data is more powerful and user-friendly than ever before. You can clearly see what is in your contracts in real-time with our data tracking and reporting. Our platform allows you to add structured data points into contracts through automation. The result is a contract portfolio that’s ready for analysis at any point.

Build better first drafts by surfacing negotiation flashpoints and provide alternative playbooked clauses from within the templates. You can also keep track of what’s market and visualise negotiation patterns across document portfolios.

Why? We know how powerful your data can be, and we make it simple for you to take control of it. Track how key clauses are being marked-up. Analyse, report on and repaper your documents using our platform. You can perform on-the-spot due diligence of every single document drafted on the platform. Unleash the power of your data with Avvoka!

10. Advanced Operations: Go beyond simple automation.

With operations you can take your templates to the next level, applying complex logic to any data in the template. We’ve introduced new and more advanced operations to bring your templates to the next level.

Using operations you can limit the number of questions that you’re asking the user. Say for example you know that the first payment date is on the 5th of December, well we can use the dependent list operation to find each subsequent payment month. Or if you have a single template for multiple regions, you can use operations to make sure that the formatting complies with the jurisdiction that the end-user is in.

Why? We love seeing what our clients can do with operations, and we wanted to give them the power to achieve even more. By introducing new operations they are able to transform their data and create incredibly powerful templates.

What’s next?

Avvoka has an exciting roadmap for the rest of 2021, with a few exciting announcements coming soon. A lot of our features will be improved further as we work closely with our clients to continually refine the platform and ensure that it meets their needs and suits how they get their work done.

We’re excited to keep implementing the feedback we receive as we continue to prove why we’re the best in the best in the business for document automation, online collaboration and negotiation, and analytics. You can watch the full trailer for Avvoka 2.0 here.

Ultimate Guide to Document Automation

Read more from Avvoka: 

By: Amy Conroy
3543960

Industry Lessons: 2020’s hottest legal tech trends

, , ,

(2 minute read)

In this article we will review :

As we approach the end of what has been a seismic year in human history, it is a perfect time to reflect on the trends that have emerged in legal tech over the past twelve months. According to a report by Wolters Kluwer, only 28% of law firms were considering new legal technology before the first wave of lockdowns in March this year. Following the transition to remote working, 56% said that their need for legal technology solutions has increased as a result of the pandemic.

This doubling of interest in legal technology is indicative of a broader change of opinion across the industry. Lower-cost, often regional, firms have historically been seen as the more prominent champions of legal technology; using it as a means to reduce their client fees and retain modest profit margins. However, the more profitable, larger law firms have been urgently seeking to embrace legal technology since the start of COVID-19 for two primary reasons.

  • Firstly, amidst the financial troubles brought about by the pandemic, legal tech allows them to maintain their profitability if they leverage their economies of scale to procure and rollout such technologies cost-effectively. 
  • Secondly, legal tech improves the quality and efficiency of remote working for fee earners, which is increasingly relevant where the importance of work-life balance is being drawn into ever-sharper focus.

As discussed in our first blogpost, document automation has been one of the tech starts during COVID-19. We have witnessed how document automation has been the solution of choice for many companies and law firms looking to innovate. That being said, from Avvoka’s viewpoint, in the legal sector, the two most prominent in legal tech for this year have been workflow automation and document analytics.

trends

Workflow Automation

Workflow automation tools have become an integral element of efficient post-pandemic corporate life. Workflow automation is the creation of a series of automated actions which replace manual processes, such as physically approaching a senior to sign off completed work.

In our new way of working, our clients can’t just pop into their colleague’s office to get something approved. Instead, they have to email or call them. Our physical distance from colleagues can be a nightmare if they’re busy in back-to-back meetings, and a deadline is looming. Due to this, unlocking the power of workflow automation has been a powerful solution for helping our clients, while also being a very popular part of the platform – we’ve been advising our clients a lot on how to use it most effectively, using our practical experience. It’s excellent when processes are set up to just ‘work’ and teams can forget about the broader picture, while the software takes care of setting and flagging immediate priorities.

For some of our larger clients, Avvoka’s workflow automation tool has helped junior legal team members rapidly secure document approvals from senior figures who can’t be accessed in person as they’re working from home, while making the process convenient and reassuring for management (as workflows can integrate process/compliance safeguards). Moreover, workflow automation has made obtaining international approvals and global input a seamless experience too, which is relevant for many of us as we find ourselves stuck in odd places around the world.

Document Analytics

In the Financial Times last week, the newspaper said that “data is the oil of the 21st century.” We agree! Our document suite analytics functionality has undoubtedly seen a surge in interest as everyone becomes increasingly alive to the real difference that reading data can make to a firm’s bottom lines. So why has analytics, in particular document analytics, been such a popular trend in the legal sector recently? It’s because legal teams are looking to harness the power of data by figuring out how they can capture and analyse data about their document negotiations (beyond the first draft) to intelligently alter existing standard processes to strategically playbook and smoothen their negotiations going forward.

Document analytics (which is possible using document automation tools that go beyond first-draft automation) enables firms to improve their deal completion efficiency by spotting the common negotiation bottlenecks within standard documents that cause the negotiation friction that kills or delays deals so that these can be removed. By utilising document analytics to figure out where deals have gone awry historically due to poor precedent drafting, it can be avoided in future. Lawyers in all parts of the industry have begun to use these kinds of features this year meaningfully. Most lawyers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they maintain and test their document precedents while they are in action, which is excellent for their stakeholders.

analytics

Avvoka’s analytics feature allows clients to search the data within their negotiated documents and surface meaningful insights. Avvoka clients can explore and sample documents by clauses, datapoints, parties, authors, where push-back has been received, where standard clauses have been deviated from and more. For example, a bank could search through its historic loan agreements by the interest rate or the governing law of the lender. Such granular insights allow firms to tailor their suites of standard documents over time and to spot “what’s market”, which is valuable information for future negotiations and for lawyers as they seek to market their services.

What do we expect to see in 2021?

If 2020 is anything to go by, we expect to see even more technological adoption by the legal sector in 2021.

In recent weeks, we’ve had an inflow of queries around intelligence-based document automation (i.e. artificial intelligence). It’s a theme which has yet to dominate the legal tech sector, so given the amount of interest around it, we have a strong hunch that this will be one of the top legal tech trends next year!

signing contract

By:  Raam Jeganathan
Automation

Automate Everything Series: Professional credentials, references and use cases

, , , , ,

(3 minute read)

Today’s blog post is a bit different. It is the first in our “Automate Everything” Series, where we’re going to explore how you can automate aspects of your business beyond your document automation, collaboration, negotiation, execution and analytics.

Today’s instalment is an interview with Andreas Parr Bjørnsund, a Director at CV Partner! 

CV Partner is a SaaS tool based primarily out of Norway and is the new way to manage your team’s professional credentials and case studies. Their clients include PwC, DLA Piper and EY Skye. 

In our wide-ranging interview with Andreas, we talk about how CV Partner helps its clients to automate their professional credentials and case studies, and what CV Partner’s primary business challenges are and how they have overcome them. We are sure most of you will be able to relate!

Andreas also tells us how they have driven the adoption of new technologies with clients. He also talks about his experiences working with law firms in particular; who he thinks are now more receptive and open to the use of digital technologies. We wrap up with an assessment of how COVID-19 has impacted the tech and business worlds.

Let’s dive in! 

Could you give us an overview of CV Partner’s business? 

CV Partner a platform for accessing all the skills and experience in your knowledge-based company. 

Each employee gets a user-friendly interface to update their CV and references, directly in their browser. It creates a single workflow for the proposal creation process, with fully customisable templates to tailor each bid. Simply export the finished document to Word, Powerpoint or PDF when you’re ready to deliver to the client.

What does CV Partner do now, and how did you get there? 
CV Partner was founded by software developers and designers who had worked in the professional services industry and learned about the time spent on manual, tedious tasks when it comes to creating documentation for bids and proposals. 

CV Partner is a SaaS tool that we have developed from scratch together with some of our first customers, namely IT consultancies in the Nordic region. Today we are 15 employees, based in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and London.

What type of automation does CV Partner do?

We automate the creation of professional credential CVs and case studies for bids and proposals. Our system takes data that is inputted by each user and allows the bid team to easily tailor and export the data in the format that is needed for the bid, including public procurement and NGO templates. For the legal firms who use CV Partner, we can also automate the ranking submissions process. 

At the start, what were the biggest challenges faced by CV Partner?

  • Getting users to trust their (often highly confidential) data being held in the cloud and not on a local device or on-premise. 
  • Making everyone see the benefit of having a SaaS tool that was “best of breed” and targeted towards the specific use case of professional credentials and use cases, which most professional services firms need to address.
  • Articulating how we fit in with the other tools that clients use, such as HR, CRM, ERP, document automation tools (like Avvoka), and many more.

How hard is it to get everyone in a client organisation to start using a new automation tool like CV Partner?

It is absolutely a challenge – we mitigate this through:

  • Company-wide training and learning sessions and kick-offs.
  • Support chat access for all users.
  • Internal communication using champions or critical stakeholders in the organisation.

Even though it is the bid/proposal/tender manager who gets the “superuser” rights for and gets the most value out of our tool, we have focused on giving all users an excellent user experience.

What are the differences between the UK Market and the Nordic Market?

We get more questions about on-premise in the UK than in the Nordics. Also, it seems like it is more transparency when it comes to access rights. In the Nordics, it is standard that all users should be able to search and find any skill or experience in their company (within their CV Partner account). While in the UK, clients tend to lock this down more, meaning that a user typically cannot access all the data about their colleagues.

How do you find promoting the adoption of cloud technology at law firms?

Our initial client base included IT consultancies and management consultancies who are often the first adopters of new technologies. Law firms are now catching up and, in some cases, even exceeding some engineering and architecture firms in terms of their adoption of new tools. I think law firms have opened up to using digital technologies as they see the efficiency improvements.

Cloud tools have now become so much better than older in-house or legacy “on-premise” tools, and even more secure, which means that many firms are trying to replace ageing systems with cloud-based ones.

Is there a difference between clients in the legal sector and others? 

Interestingly, some of the people we are talking to at law firms (in administration, marketing and HR functions) have backgrounds in IT or management consulting. They were hired to bring best practices from another professional services type firm into the legal space. For this reason, the differences aren’t so significant!

Has COVID-19 impacted the number of client enquiries you’ve received and clients’ perception of your offering?

Yes, we have seen that some clients have now begun to see the need for functional cloud tools because of the pandemic.
We have been able to grow, and onboard brand-new clients remotely after the pandemic started, but some rollouts have been postponed as well. 

Most of our clients have been able to grow during the pandemic, and some have reported record high billing rates (in terms of billable hours).

What have you done to help the team cope during the pandemic?

Yes, we have regular virtual coffee and lunches where games are played online as a group. “Among us” and skribbl have been our go-to games recently!

By: Macarena Valenzuela
codingprogramming

Should tomorrow’s lawyers be techies?

, , ,

(2 minute read)

Since we’ve just announced our Campus Ambassador scheme, we’re focussing on aspiring commercial lawyers this week.

We’ve been thinking about which technology-specific skills law students should learn as they embark on their legal careers (at private practice firms primarily).

In this post we will discuss :

Disclaimer: if you haven’t already, apply for our Campus Ambassador scheme here!

When Avvoka invited applications for its internship programme earlier this year, so many outstanding candidates wrote to us. The applicants all showed massive interest in the latest wave of technological disruption in the legal industry; a trend that has only accelerated during the overnight transition into a remote working world. Technology is disrupting every sector, with the legal industry being no exception. Over the past few years, the giants of the legal sector such as Allen & Overy, Slaughter and May, Baker McKenzie, Clyde & Co, Latham & Watkins and Wilson Sonsini (and so many more) have aggressively championed technological advancement. They have either announced legal tech incubators, like Fuse or have built their internal legal technologies from scratch.

Firms of all sizes have also incorporated technology law or legal technology as a key component of their training. Clifford Chance has a tech-focused training contract called IGNITE, during which trainees learn how to deliver tech-based solutions for clients. Linklaters, Norton Rose Fulbright, Herbert Smith Freehills and Weightmans (among many others) offer an internal secondment into their internal legal technology functions.

With all of these new initiatives being born and gaining exponential traction, prospective lawyers now wonder how much IT knowledge they need to succeed in a legal career today? Well, the answer depends. In most cases, you just need to be interested in technology and how it’s affecting the business world and have a willingness to learn, as well as an aptitude for detail. But if you want to stand out in commercial law or to move into the legal tech startup world, then some skills can help you to get ahead.

Do I need to know how to code?

What is coding? Coding is the act of translating codes from human language to a machine-based language. It’s often confused with programming, which is the development of an executable software program. Coding just a subset of programming.

Most simply? No. More and more legal tech tools are becoming like Avvoka; which doesn’t require users to know how to code to get maximum value. In Avvoka, even Luddites can assemble and automate their contracts using our visual document automation logic builder, which is often explained in minutes at our Avvoka Academy sessions. Not everyone should need to learn how to code; time is precious. Almost half of the team at Avvoka can’t code!

That said, why might an aspiring lawyer still do well to learn to code? The business landscape is changing with technology companies dominating the headlines and stock markets (such as S&P500 and Nasdaq). The world’s most valuable company is Apple, and seven out of the world’s ten most valuable public companies are technology companies (including Apple, Amazon, Facebook Google, and Microsoft). In this commercial context, understanding coding is a valuable way to stand out and build rapport with technology clients. Coder lawyers more readily speak the language of technology companies.

Another important thing is that while you might not need to code – that isn’t to say that learning to code won’t hurt. In fact, we’d go as far as to argue that anyone who has a background in law, whether as a lawyer or law student, would be incredibly good at learning how to code. Why? Coding is about taking a problem, and identifying the fastest solution – not necessarily the only one that is right. Lawyers already have these skills as they have to logically break down a problem into different components and tackle them in this way, a skill that is great when it comes to learning how to code.   

Coding is also a great skill to pick up if you enjoy testing your logic and reasoning skills as well as improving them. Learning how to code will inherently improve your problem solving and analysis skills as you learn to break down problems and identify the most appropriate solutions. Fundamentally, writing code is just translating a set of instructions for a computer to understand. It’s good practice. Like software, contracts contain logic and a set of instructions that parties use to understand their reciprocal obligations. If, after reading this, you want to learn to code, then you can learn it for free on platforms such as Coursera and edX (edX even runs a programme targeted directly at teaching lawyers to code) – check them out!

Do I need to know the principles of coding?

Most simply? Again, no. As with coding, many legal tech platforms like Avvoka have few barriers to entry/use. This means you don’t need to know how to program – the set of instructions which tell the computer how to perform a task are done for you.

Should I still try and learn how it works (even if I can’t do it myself)? Yes. The apps we use every day are built from programming. Whether you use WhatsApp, TikTok or Snapchat, all these applications on your phone are created using programming. They use languages such as Python, Java, C, C++, Swift or one of the many others out there.

Also, in professions like strategy consulting, many of the entry-level graduate roles require a knowledge of programming. The reason for this is that businesses are now increasingly data-driven in their decision making and in how they model their business strategies. As lawyers are first and foremost trusted business advisors, an understanding of programming will help you to be an effective advisor to your clients. 

Programming is also something you might want to consider if you’re building your own business. Just like coding, it helps you manage the digital side of your operations effectively instead of relying on external people or hiring from a niche pool of individuals, who are often well-remunerated and in short supply.

Is there anything else I should learn?

Yes – learning about how the law and technology intersect is something really important. You should learn about the history of technology-driven law firms, focusing on things like:

  • How have they adopted technology over the past few decades? 
  • How have the trends affected law firms and their clients’ businesses? 
  • What’s the revenue model of a typical technology company, and what are their critical commercial risks? 
  • How do they operate from a technological perspective?

Understanding the answers to these questions means that you’ll understand how a tech company operates, meaning you can be more precise in addressing their problems in a legal context. Technology isn’t an anomaly. It’s like anything else – the more you know, the better you’ll be at harnessing it. 

 Get involved now! Participate in a hackathon, read a book on legal tech, read blogs and Twitter or maybe even apply to programs such as the Avvoka Campus Ambassador Scheme or the Avvoka Lab!

If you want to find out how you can get started with document automation, check out The Ultimate Guide: Document Automation 2022 – Our very own e-book where we provide expert legal tech advice about everything you will need to know and learn.

By:  Raam Jeganathan
14

Legal Tech isn’t legal tech

, , , , ,

(2 minute read)

If you Google ‘What is Legal Tech’ you’re met with the definition from Wikipedia, which states that Legal Tech apparently is “the use of technology and software to provide legal services and support the legal industry,” but that’s not really the case – or at least not the full story. 

In this post we will review :

Where We Were

It’s hard to pinpoint precisely where modern technology started being applied to legal use cases, whether that be with the introduction of dictation machines to law firms in 1950 or the first usage of fax machines in firms in the 1980s.

The introduction of the buzzword of Legal Tech mainly came from the marketing of the same technology tools that other businesses were using specifically to legal services providers. The technology industry began targeting law firms and in-house teams rather than waiting for legal practitioners to come to them.

More recently, however, we’ve gone from seeing mainstream technology tools used by all kinds of businesses to a flurry of new tools developed specifically for legal applications. What does this look like? Well, this includes contract negotiation platforms that are designed to reduce the inefficiencies found in the way that lawyers currently negotiate contracts (sending emails sent back and forth). These forms of Legal Tech are just as useful to procurement and sales professionals, who hammer out contracts daily, as it is to legal services providers. Should these technologies even be known as Legal Tech anymore, when jumping through legal hoops is a core part of the routine commercial operations of business people within every single industry? Who gets to decide?

Where We Are

The current Legal Tech market has massively expanded in recent years. In particular, areas such as document automation, automated drafting support and contract life cycle management have continued to evolve with many new companies and startups trying their hand at the Legal Tech field. Tools that perform due diligence checks using Artificial Intelligence have also come on leaps and bounds in recent years and have relieved the workload of lawyers by reviewing documents for red flags that lawyers might need to review further.

Why has the Legal Tech world seen more startups targeting legal pain points in particular? The pressure to evolve and innovate has come from the law firm’s clients, interested in getting more value for less expenditure. The tools available in the Legal Tech market cover the aspects of legal services businesses that are least efficient and where they might stand to save the most money.

Another significant development in recent years has been the increasing focus on using technology to improve access to justice. Tools such as DoNotPay, AsylumConnect, and Legal Defence are brilliant examples of how tech is being applied for good causes. The barrier to legal advice has often been set too high, and the legal market will likely resolve this by leveraging automation and ML to bring legal advice to more people.

Where We’re Going

What’s the exciting trend we’ve noticed? Well, while we explained that the recent boom in Legal Tech has come from the software that is explicitly targeted at legal pain points, a lot of these platforms are now shifting away from focusing specifically on legal markets but also a wide variety of commercial businesses.

We’ve seen Legal Tech deployed across industries such as media and entertainment, pharmaceutical industries, and real estate – most of these industries are also looking to automate non-legal documents. 

Budgets and the overwhelming breadth of Legal Tech tools have likely shifted in focus in marketing from some companies as they look to expand their client-base. Others will realise that the true value of their product comes from outside of the legal world. 

For document automation, this could mean we’re automating the invoice or purchase order, or for the human resources department we’re automating their new joiners forms and speeding up the employee onboarding process. Particularly at Avvoka, this has allowed us to expand our reach and develop our tool to cater to all industries.

What does this mean for the future of Legal Tech? We’re likely going to see many Legal Tech vendors moving away from targeting just legal services providers and possibly even ceasing to market themselves as LegalTech companies. For many on the outside of the legal world, seeing the term Legal Tech probably means the minute the company description lands on their desk, they will forward it onto the legal department. 

This doesn’t mean that all areas of Legal Tech will see this shift, there are specific tools such as litigation analytics and dispute resolution that will stay firmly in the legal market, however, we won’t be surprised if in the next few years you see that many Legal Tech companies start marketing to the more general public. 

These trends will provide an exciting opportunity for the Legal Tech market, however, as rather than being limited and stalled by the state of the legal world – companies can develop and evolve their product outside of the more narrow market. Tools focused on things such as document automation, business development, and collaboration, for example, have space and a market outside of the legal world to grow into. 

The future of Legal Tech is bright, but not necessarily all that legal. Regular people that use legal processes, not the lawyers, will ultimately be the ones who decide what it will look like…

By: Amy Conroy
Untitled design

Legal Tech innovation: The hardest thing is getting started

, , , , ,

(3 minute read)

In this post we will review :

Everyone seems to be talking about disruption and innovation, including those within the legal sector. We always hear about new advances in legal tech, like: 

  • AI-powered due diligence
  • Judicial decision making based on machine learning
  • Legal chatbots
  • Smart contracts
  • Blockchain contracts
  • Document automation
  • Natural language processing for legal research
  • Robotic process automation
  • Contract lifecycle management

Despite this chatter, the uptake of new digital solutions has been muted in some parts of the legal services industry. Some think this is due to lawyers’ natural, risk-averse attitudes, which they adopt to protect their clients from uncertainty. However, this seems a remarkably convenient excuse for legal technology vendors and their failure to persuade lawyers to use legal technology effectively. The onus of persuading a departure from centuries-old tradition sits firmly with the proponents of change. Legaltech vendors’ historical reluctance to listen and communicate openly with lawyers’ highly bespoke needs, to reassure and convince, should shoulder most blame for the shortfall in legal tech adoption.

Even with the backdrop of these historic shortcomings by legal technology vendors and a lack of legal tech adoption across the board, the broader revolution in legal services delivery has been far from on pause, it’s exploded! Alternative legal service providers and the likes of Avvo, LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer have ridden the crest of this revolutionary wave in legal services delivery innovation. Firms with these sorts of more commoditised, modern product offerings continue to grow exponentially and proliferate. Legal tech startups seem to be rising as well. However, many legal technology vendors have still managed to break out, with numerous blockbuster successes. 

Each day there seems to be a new player emerging, making the legal tech world exceptionally difficult to keep up with. However, legal technology should not be an intimidating topic! In this post, we will demystify legal tech. We will give you all the instructions you’ll need to successfully and effortlessly take your first steps on the path to legal tech innovation.

Is good enough, good enough?

“There’s a way to do it better…find it”. 

Thomas A. Edison

How should I innovate my business? Where should I start? These are the questions that legal services providers have been asking themselves for years. These questions are more relevant than ever, as COVID-19 has accelerated the process of legal tech adoption, at least in the short term. The good news is that legal services providers have a vast array of tools to choose from to implement their innovation, but the bind remains which ones to pick.

Even in the context of the dawn of the legal tech revolution, it’s important to preface any discussion by acknowledging that no one is going to change the way they practice law completely. According to Michel DeStefano, the adoption of innovation in the legal services industry should be about TNT. And not the explosive! But “Tiny Noticeable Things”, incremental changes and improvements that give you lasting value, but don’t depart too far from what you do already (and which is generally working fine anyway).

Legal innovation is doomed to fail wherever its proponents seek to overhaul a legal practice overnight entirely or to adopt absolutely every kind of hyped-up legal tech product that’s available. Great legal innovation involves gradually introducing changes to the ways you work and just keeping an open mind about trying new ways of getting things done. That said, it can be richly beneficial to stay ahead of the game! Legal practitioners that have open dialogues with legal technology vendors and experts and who keep up with the latest emergent technologies get access to the new tools on a discounted basis and can steal a competitive march on competitors in terms of healthier margins and better external marketing opportunities.

Don’t worry, AI or a terminator-type robot is not going to replace lawyers; the retirement of the typewriter did not dispense with the need for smart and commercial legal minds. Automation, AI and similar technologies are there to help lawyers and to supercharge what they can achieve. These technologies can be a great tool to do away with routine, repetitive and mechanical tasks. They allow lawyers to concentrate on more creative work and do what they should do best: debating legal problems and commercial considerations and then providing quality legal advice to clients. Legal innovation is there to make our lives simpler, improve speed, reduce risks and minimise errors. Take advantage of the tools you have at your fingertips!

However, careful thought must be given to where legal practitioners integrate legal tech into what they do. Richard Susskind argues that when introducing new legal technologies “the challenge is to innovate, to practise law in ways that we could not have done in the past”. In other words, it is about enabling lawyers to do more and better things, rather than just doing away with their biggest bugbears using technology, which can also be very rewarding in its own right! Running with the example of document automation, we can’t call ourselves legal innovation evangelists as soon as we have automated the drafting of our NDAs, we should look to automate the creation of our most complex agreements too.

Why bother with legal tech at all?

If something is not broken, why fix it? Well, because legal tech innovation can still enhance the way you work, even where you are, frankly, nailing it already! 

The most immediate benefit of most legal tech tools is the ever-glamorous bonus of increased efficiency. Richard Susskind gives an excellent analogy in his book Tomorrow’s Lawyer illustrating how this benefit can accrue even for the most experienced and adept legal practitioner. He talks about the experienced taxi driver that knows all the streets of a city and who may have spent years perfecting this knowledge. However, this driver’s daily driving would still be enhanced by the use of a modern sat-nav due to its live traffic updates. 

Essentially, adding tech into what legal practitioners do is about combining their existing and enviable expertise with insights and data that can only be gained through supplementing your experience with technology. Take the example of contract drafting. A 15PQE solicitor is likely to be outstanding and rapid at contract drafting due to their wealth of knowledge. However, where document automation is used to take care of all of the most boilerplate drafting, all this does is buy the solicitor more time to focus on doing their most complex and bespoke drafting and taking client instructions.

The most successful law firms hold their clients as their central focus, and that is why they thrive. Legal technology, particularly tools like document automation, often expedite the speed with which consistent and exceptional quality work can be provided to clients, which clients love! Lawyers can reduce the scope for mistakes by reducing manual inputs and also lessen the required intensity of review of junior practitioners’ work by supervising lawyers. All of this means is that providers who use legal tech (like document automation tools) can deliver work, of the standard that clients are accustomed to, quicker and at a lower cost, leading to a clear competitive advantage.  Finally incorporating legal technology can be a great opportunity to thrive in these uncertain times.

Innovate with legal tech today

Start piloting. And no, you don’t need to get flying lessons for that. Try new products! Reach out to the vendors whose products you find interesting. Most legal tech products out there will offer you a demo or free trial. If you like what you see, you can get started with a pilot or proof of concept project to assess how the technology fits your existing working culture and how impactful it can be for you and your colleagues. If the pilot is successful, great!

Some legal tech vendors offer free teach-ins, workshops, beta-testing lab sessions or even full-blown legal tech academies. You can readily and freely try new technologies and provide feedback to improve them. Nobody knows better what is needed from a legal tech product than a potential user. Try new legal tech features and functions first. Take the chance to see and shape the future of legal tech before everyone else lives it! Be a pioneer!

Organise or participate in a legal hackathon. Hackathons come from the tech world but have started to appear in the legal environment too. They are events in which multidisciplinary teams collaborate to create prototype solutions with the help of technology. Many are designed to improve access to justice or help vulnerable people with innovative legal tech ideas. These experiences are great to improve the creative side of everyone involved. It can help you to get your colleagues to challenge and change their mindset. Some truly great ideas have been launched out of these initiatives! 

Visit legal tech incubators (virtually for now!). Take, for example, Allen & Overy’s FUSE, an innovative space designed to bring together legal tech startups and drive legal innovation. Companies housed in these spaces are always working on the newest projects, open to sharing ideas, meeting new legal practitioners and exchanging advice. Ask which webinars and conferences to attend, which podcasts to listen to and which blogs and articles to read to stay in the loop!

Get innovating with legal technology! Start gradually, and identify your most significant pain points before adopting too many tools. Begin with the products that address you and your colleagues’ most time-consuming daily tasks, and you won’t go far wrong. Remember that small, smart changes often have the most significant impact.

By: Macarena Valenzuela
e-sign

Success Stories: How has Avvoka helped both law firms and businesses during COVID-19?

, , ,

(3 minute read)

The adoption of new technology requires rigorous and meticulous examination of vendors to find who can unlock the strongest return on investment, as well as training on how to use the newly procured technology. However, COVID-19 has made digital transformation an urgent business priority. According to McKinsey Digital, during the start of lockdown, businesses, on average, took eight weeks to adopt five years worth of digital transformation. Staggering!

So what’s the purpose of this week’s article? It’s to highlight how our forward-thinking clients have made the most of document automation during the pandemic, and by extension, how they’ve achieved superb ROI through using Avvoka. With the world now working from home, document automation software has jumped to the front of the essential technology queue. It’s become pivotal to the daily operations of innovative companies across multiple sectors; from banks needing to approve emergency loans, to pharmaceutical companies filling out information from potential trial participants for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Here’s a few elements of end-to-end document automation that have most empowered business during the pandemic:

  • Live Document Collaboration 
  • Workflow Automation
  • Clause Libraries
  • Mass Document Generation 
  • Analytics

Below, we’ll go into more detail about some of these features and how we’ve seen them being used to excellent effect during the pandemic :

signing contract

Workflow Automation

As we discussed last week, workflow automation tools have become an integral element of efficient post-pandemic corporate life. Workflow automation is the creation of a series of automated actions which replace manual processes, such as physically approaching your supervisor to sign off your work.

In our new way of working, you can’t just pop into your colleague’s office to get something approved. Instead, your obvious alternative is now to email or call them. This can be a nightmare if they’re busy in back-to-back meetings, you’re on a deadline or if they have unconventional working hours. Due to this, unlocking the power of workflow automation has been a powerful solution for helping our clients to overcome this problem.

One of our biggest clients is a global juggernaut in the entertainment and media space. It has a vast global presence with one of its subsidiaries operating in 150 countries alone. We help their employees automate a variety of internal documents, such as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and partnership agreements. 

Avvoka’s workflow automation tool has helped employees to quickly secure document approvals from senior figures who can’t be accessed in person as they’re working from home while making granting such approvals easier too. Moreover, workflow automation has made obtaining international approvals and global colleague input a seamless experience too.

workflow

For example,  take the NDA. Since our client operates in several countries, their NDAs cover multiple jurisdictions. We helped our client add multiple approval workflows to their NDAs to reflect this reality. They have set their workflow up so that, depending upon which region is selected in the NDA questionnaire, the relevant approvers are automatically notified to check and approve the NDA. Our client loved this! It streamlined their international transactions, reduced email traffic for approvers and sped up our client’s ability to get programmes up and running in different countries.

Clause Library

Businesses love using clause libraries. Clause libraries let users store various provisions in a central folder, enabling them to add these to their templates whenever they are required. If the clause needs to be updated, instead of going into each template and manually changing the clause, all you need to do is amend the clause in the clause library.

Our SME clients use clause banks to store similar clauses with slightly varied wording (differentiated depending on the sector of the given deal counterparty, for example). Having these clauses at their fingertips saves them time when customising documents, which is a principal aim of document automation and legal/ops tech generally.

clause library

As with workflow automation, clause libraries have come into their own during COVID-19 as getting hold of internal colleagues to share bespoke wording for niche contracts has become more challenging. Instead of delaying the completion of these new contracts until they hear back from colleagues, employees have been using clause libraries to find and add the required custom, pre-approved clauses themselves.

One of our clients,  an online travel agency, makes particularly extensive use of  the clause library. Their website operates in over 30 languages, so it’s important for their documents to have multilingual capability. This client often negotiates contracts in one language but, due to the jurisdictions involved, some additional wording in another language is required. 

Mass Document Generation

Corporate transaction volumes have rebounded substantially since the start of the third quarter of 2020. According to the FT, the number of M&A deals this September was 73% higher than during the same time last year. 

With working from home blurring the lines between the professional and personal spheres, it’s become more important than ever for us all to establish and maintain a work-life balance. 

A high volume of M&A deals on the cards can mean a long streak of deal closings with each involving a substantial number of largely duplicated documentation. The last thing any lawyer or business person wants to be doing is replicating the late nights of the office, at home.

 

Contract automation technology

Avvoka helps clients with this problem by allowing them to populate hundreds of (even highly complex) documents in one go, including bundles of related documents (like a suite of corporate authorisations).

Avvoka helped the Brussels office of an international law firm populate multiple documents in one go during a private equity transaction, which took place over the school holidays! The client had to draft multiple hundred deal documents. Instead of the Client having to perform the manual, time-intensive task filling in the same input fields and consequential drafting amendments with ever-so-slightly differentiated information in each document, Avvoka “saved Christmas” for the client. By using Avvoka’s mass-generation tool, the client saved hours and didn’t have to end up spending the multiple all-nighters over their children’s holiday period undertaking an automatable task. Since that particular transaction, the client now regularly uses Avvoka to generate multiple documents and have been able to deliver even quicker and better-value deals for their own clients.

What’s Next?

COVID-19 has opened people’s minds to the importance of technology. Specifically, within the legal world, document automation has been an incredible tool which has facilitated our clients’ ability to deploy remote working. The examples we’ve covered show how Avvoka has been able to help, and we hope that this trend continues – automation helps make jobs easier!

If you want to find out how you can get started with document automation, check out The Ultimate Guide: Document Automation 2022 – Our very own e-book where we provide expert legal tech advice about everything you will need to know and learn.

By:  Raam Jeganathan
3696303

Document Automation: The Legal Tech Star of COVID-19?

, ,

(3 minute read)

Much of the hype around computer software, especially in the Legal Tech world, has been reserved exclusively for the buzzwords of the day, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Why wouldn’t it? 

AI and machine learning both sound like intriguing but opaque topics, hard to understand without a computer science background. The idea of creating a machine that can automatically learn and improve from previous experiences, despite not necessarily being programmed to do so, is very alluring but intimidating. 

Who wouldn’t be excited about the idea of using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do their work for them? 

Despite their allure, artificial intelligence and machine learning have not been the stars of the show during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead we think the stars have been:

Tobias Lütke, the CEO of Shopify, told the Business Insider,

“The future we imagined for 2030 has been pulled forward to the present, with everything going digital by default.”

With that in mind, it probably comes as no surprise that with the worldwide shift to online many legal tech firms are thriving. 

Below, we explore what the COVID-19 pandemic has meant for Legal Tech firms :

The Need for Innovation

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered day to day life for the vast majority of people around the world. Businesses and law firms have been no exception to this drastic change. Numerous businesses have been forced to shut down, and those that are still operating have had to change the ways that they work. 

Pre-pandemic, many businesses and law firms were stuck in the status quo, following outdated processes because ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’. It wasn’t broken, so why fix it?

However, even before the COVID-19 crisis, many clients were already beginning to ask for more bang for their buck. Companies were fed up paying for processes that involved disproportionately large manual burdens and labour costs. These processes included physical file maintenance, hand-signing documents, drafting handwritten notes and subsequent word processing and archaic methods of billing.

These practices were not practical when COVID-19 hit, as most individuals around the world were sent to work from home. Most of the companies, therefore shifted online, meaning that it was necessary to adopt more innovative practices at pace and scale.

Document Automation as the Solution

Where does document automation come in? Document automation software allows you to create perfect, custom documents by filling out a questionnaire with bespoke information. Automation enables you to do your job more efficiently by reducing the amount of manual legwork and repetitive tasking that’s required to draft documents. At the same time, automation reduces errors and improves consistency and quality of work. 

Document automation

Automation allows companies to free up their employees to:

  • Do more of their most critical and mentally stimulating work
  • Complete their job more efficiently
  • See a higher return on investment 
  • Meet and exceed client expectations
  • Eradicate errors by removing opportunities for manual mistakes

Remote-first working has further highlighted the need for document automation to ensure a smoother collaborative working experience where employees and customers are based in multiple locations around the world. With platforms like Avvoka, teams can easily collaborate while drafting a document, while clients can take part in the negotiation of the agreements in the same platform. This allows companies and law firms to get to yes faster, especially in these uncertain times.

Document automation is the perfect solution to address the issues caused by the shift to remote working. Using automation means that you do not have to rely on your colleagues to produce the first draft of a document. This is especially useful when you are working across locations, and potentially across time zones. 

Implementing a document automation platform also ensures that all team members are able to see exactly which documents have been created, what stage they’re currently at and more importantly that everyone is on the same page.

Importantly as well, using a document automation system can ensure compliance of a company’s data security policies. Although everyone is currently working remotely, this allows managers to have direct access to information on every individual who has worked on the document, making sure that nothing is missed and no mistakes are made.

Innovation during COVID-19

There is no doubt that we’ve seen a massive change in the way that we work. For the business world, the vast majority of this has happened behind the scenes as they’ve adopted new technologies to ensure that they can work from home. 

According to Forbes, innovation allows companies to provide their customers with:

“expanded access, choice, delivery speed, value, and satisfaction.”

As businesses shift their operations online many of them have adopted automation software to innovate and continue to meet their customers’ expectations. Customers have begun demanding the change, and it is up to the businesses to provide it.

Innovating during COVID-19 is no longer a luxury and instead, has become a necessity. Document automation has become an increasingly popular software across the board; from banks needing software to approve loans, to medical services using the software to fill out client information. 

There are lots of features common across document automation platforms that we think have been useful through the pandemic, however one particular feature that we’ve seen become increasingly popular during the pandemic is for a document automation system that goes beyond first draft automation, and instead one that also incorporates workflow automation. 

With most if not all deals being completed online and employees no longer in the same office, there has been an increasing need to maintain processes. Being able to incorporate their workflow and maintain the same hierarchy of approval for a document has been invaluable for many of our clients during COVID-19. 

The pandemic has changed the face of document automation, and what clients are looking to get out of their automation platforms. With greater attention to workflow automation and integration to ensure the same practices used in the office can be used between employees across different locations, many systems are shifting their focus to improving and developing this feature. 

COVID-19 has quickly improved the rate of acceptance of the document automation software available in the Legal Tech world. The rate of growth will likely continue to exceed all previous expectations.

The Future of Innovation and Document Automation

The Legal Tech world has learned a lot during the past seven months, including that the customers should come first – evidenced by the uptake in Legal Tech and document automation. It is no doubt that COVID-19 has drastically affected innovation and creativity in the business world, and it will continue to do so. 

The ongoing pandemic will continue to drive innovation within businesses. As part of this, document automation will be at the forefront of many companies’ minds if it is not already. 

The shift towards the worldwide acceptance of document automation is welcomed and is undoubtedly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Document automation has outpaced better-known technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This has been due to its quick implementation period and the immediate time and workload savings made to the day-to-day activities of all businesses, as well as its ability to improve working from home experiences and mimic the workflow used in many different offices. 

In contrast to more advanced technologies, document automation software can be quickly deployed to meet the new demands that have come to the fore during the pandemic. 

While one can’t make easy predictions about the adoption of Legal Tech software across companies – what is inevitable is that the future of Legal Tech, and which technologies will achieve mass-adoption, is up to enterprise customers.

By: Amy Conroy
Vector illustration concept of return on investment. Modern illustration conceptual for banner, flyer, promotion, marketing material, online advertising, business presentation

ROI: Seek and you shall find

, ,

(3 minute read)

In our previous article, we discussed why this “pens down” period might be the ideal time to reflect upon internal processes and the opportunities that may exist to improve them. Here, we hope to highlight the ‘everyday’ documents which are strong contenders for automation which have traditionally been overlooked.

Today we will discuss :

Return on investment is everywhere 

A great place to start thinking about this is to consider which documents you have worked on, opened, or attached to emails in this past week. Of these documents, which of them are you likely to work on or open again next week? Chances are, despite their importance, you’re not sending out share purchase agreements or facility agreements week in, week out! 

industries using document automation software media law firms real estate private equity finance professional services pharmaceutical logistics and supply chain

However, despite the infrequency of their use, we typically find that these ‘core’ documents have been historically favoured for automation. The reason for this is about return on investment: the time investment of using legacy automation software, characterised by “coding”, means it has generally been the preserve of the core revenue-hitting documents, even if they are not drafted on a daily or weekly basis. 

Consequently, all of the ‘non-core’ ancillary documents being utilised on a daily basis were forced into the shadows of automation projects because they did not offer a sufficient return on investment from a time-utilisation perspective.

However, with Avvoka and the other new technologies on the market, businesses now have the luxury of choice since the requirement to learn a coding / mark-up language in order to automate is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. This means that the barrier to entry for automation is now incredibly low, making it accessible to everyone. Thanks to this shift, documents that would be “nice to haves” from an automation perspective become viable candidates to template. 

Non-core but key documents

Set out below are documents that are great candidates for automation which don’t necessarily fit into the camp of “core documents”, but whose automation greatly aids drafting efficiency:

  1. Intra-group agreements (SPAs, asset transfer, assignment, novation agreements)
  2. Company secretarial (board minutes, shareholder resolutions, notice of meetings)
  3. HR documents (employment, notice of transfer, termination and option agreements etc)
  4. IP transfer documents (licence, franchise agreements)

We would hedge our bets that you are far more frequently acquainted with these types of documents on a weekly basis!

These documents are often required en masse and are manually reproduced on many types of transactions. Whilst they may not be revenue-generating heroes, their automation would free up the time of many individuals within an organisation, allowing them to do more valuable pieces of work, and offer greater procedural simplicity. 

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Automation-Guide-graphics-v1-6.png

what can be automated

An explanation of how documents can be mass-generated is set out in the Appendix

Automation of forms?

Contract automation doesn’t always have to involve contracts! You could automate almost any type of document. Although it might sound odd, automation tools can rapidly assemble forms that businesses are required to complete on a regular basis. The time savings are excellent but, even better, is the fact that data can be captured in the form and sent straight to another software application (with the right API calls, of course).

Here are some other examples of documentation not traditionally viewed through the “contract automation” lens but which are well within the scope of modern tools:

  1. KYC documentation, information security and vendor due diligence forms
  2. New account opening forms
  3. Multi-jurisdictional questionnaires, for gathering local counsel advice on large-scale matters

An example of a form use case is set out in the Appendix

Appendix
Mass-generate functionality

On Avvoka, users are able to mass-generate documents from a single source to further increase efficiency gains on these non-core documents that we have outlined in this article. 

Our mass-generate functionality is achieved by:

  1. Automating a template on Avvoka
  2. Leveraging our Excel builder, which transforms the automated questionnaire into an xlsx file that can be downloaded to allow users to input data
  3. Completing the downloaded Excel file: each column is used to produce a new document
  4. Once the Excel file is completed, this can be re-uploaded into the system. Avvoka will then produce a document for each column of data contained in the Excel file

This offers huge efficiency gains and procedural simplicity for these run-of-the-mill documents.

Using the Excel spreadsheet

Form Automation

The image below shows a standard account opening form which has been automated in Avvoka. Forms are such a great document to automate on the platform because of the ability to route the automated form to numerous different teams and departments within an organisation, as well as having the ability to send the forms out to counterparties.

Example Form Automation

Load More