Why Should Legal Teams Use Legal Tech?

With limited budgets and time, it can be nerve-wracking for legal teams to take on legal tech, especially if it has never been implemented before. Here, we want to break down the myths and identify why legal teams should take on legal technology.

There was once a time when paper ruled the legal world. However, in today’s industry, big firms and solo practitioners cannot rely on this as a way of doing business, particularly in the wake of a global pandemic.

Enter the ever-evolving sector of legal technology, which has fundamentally altered the profession for the better. Digital innovations have flooded the industry over the past few years, and as more firms begin to embrace these novel platforms, their potential is quickly being realised.

Legal tech has firms firing on all cylinders. From saving time to trimming overhead, there are several ways in which practitioners are seeing improvements.

Improving Workflow With Legal Tech

Having everyone on the same page is paramount for firms today, and­ traditional workflows are having a problem keeping up.

Leveraging legal tech is the solution. Firstly, by streamlining processes into a single system, workforces have access to essential tools and can operate at peak performance. At the same time, they can meet the security and compliance demands that clients have come to expect.

Optimising workflow itself is not the only advantage - it enables so many other benefits as well. For instance, lawyers can spend more time with clients and less time on research, while making their daily activities more cost-effective.

Less Paper, More Clients

Legal tech lets lawyers offload basic, time-consuming tasks, allowing them to focus on their relationship with clients and their services.

Summarising contracts, logging renewal dates, proofing files - the list goes on. Modern firms, small and large, have realised that it simply does not have to be done manually anymore. By allowing legal tech to take care of basic, process-oriented tasks, work is streamlined, It allows users to spend more time on the art of practising law and building relationships with clients.  It's also important to take care of the basics like cleaning up your devices and databases to allow you to work more efficiently.

Software like Summize, works intuitively with lawyers, reducing time spent reviewing contracts and creating summaries – tasks that monopolise valuable time. Time that, with such a tool, could be spent more productively.

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Legal Tech – An Asset to the Research Team

It’s not just a time drain, but it’s also an imperfect science. Legal tech can help firms beat both.

Some digital tools allow users to skip hours of research by uploading briefs to see related laws and cases. The comprehensive databases within these systems are used by firms around the world to search legal and non-legal documents alike. By being able to query terms and filings they can be as informed as possible.

Legal tech will not replace lawyers and paralegals or their experience, but is there to complement them. The combination of thorough software and an experienced legal team is a formidable asset for any firm.

A Cost-Cutter

Even before COVID-19 took its toll on the legal industry, firms had been looking for ways to minimise expenditures. Operating costs are responsible for a significant portion—almost 50% of firms’ operating budgets (1).

Legal tech strikes many of those costs from the budget. In the US, the growing success and presence of virtual firms has proven that by employing legal tech strategically, firms can pass significant cost savings on to clients and perform services more efficiently.

Conclusion

While it is unlikely that major brick-and-mortar firms will go fully virtual anytime soon, most certainly recognise that by using tech, they can reap some of the benefits experienced by other firms and use them to take their market share.

Here at Summize, we believe that all legal teams should embrace legal tech. Our platform can help you understand, manage and review contracts your way, saving both time and money. Why not  today or check out our case studies to see how we’ve helped other customers.