Success Stories

(2 minute read)

In this article we will review :

• Workflow Automation
• Document Analytics
• What we expect to see in 2021

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.

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.

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!

By:  Raam Jeganathan  

(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 :

• Workflow Automation
• Clause Library
• Mass Document Generation

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.

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.

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.

 

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