Change, innovation and training
Training to use new systems takes time and dedication from lawyers – the challenge is to find the capacity, says Jack Shepherd, legal practice lead at iManage.
So, your lawyers can’t streamline their workflow until it’s moved to a new system, but they can’t make time for training on the new system because they’re too busy delivering for clients. Sound familiar?
Keep it simple. Don’t tell me you don’t run a mile when you see a four-hour block of training added to your calendar, or a set of instructions in an email longer than most merger and acquisition contracts. Think about formats like bite-sized videos or target times when people are likely to have the headspace for learning.
When pushing for onboarding, I usually prefer to use a carrot rather than a stick, but sometimes it takes for something to be taken away for people to realise they have no choice but to learn how to use a new system.
What can really move the needle is leveraging your lawyers. People are more likely to listen to training from other lawyers (sorry IT department). In an article, Legatics CCO Daniel Porus suggests that you identify your champions and leverage early successes – celebrate those early wins to gain momentum and build greater awareness across the business with people who are eager to be a part of the success.
Training ChatGPT in the art of contracts
In a bid to save time, I’ve been putting ChatGPT through some more testing real-world scenarios. I put its language learning model to the test recently by throwing a few contract drafting scenarios its way. At first glance the results are superficially impressive, but then crumble under any meaningful scrutiny. Part of the problem is that the output of Chat GPT will vary wildly depending on how your input is phrased — for instance, asking the same question in a slightly different way may produce a massively different output. Given its ability to string together a sentence, this is useful for idea generation or creativity, but perhaps less so for a profession that relies on consistency.
The fact is, ChatGPT does not actually understand the legal consequences of the text it spits out. It operates in the vacuum of cyberspace, never taking into account important factors such as what the governing law should be.
To be fair, ChatGPT’s does display a disclaimer that its content should “not to be used without consulting an attorney.” You’d be very brave to use anything more than a few words professionally without thoroughly reviewing and refining its outputs. The general consensus is that, at present, ChatGPT’s role is more suited for producing rough contract drafts rather than final versions. It is a time saver, but like us all, could do with a bit more training.
Collective intelligence isn’t a solo venture
The real goal for upskilling a workforce is reaching maturity in collective intelligence. Overcoming the challenges of hybrid working is as much about upskilling people as it is about technology. The firms that excel – by boosting knowledge sharing and collective intelligence during change – are the ones that address both human and technical aspects. The new post-Covid norm requires lawyers and employees to adapt to new work methods, which as we know, is not easy.
IT leaders must use technology to bridge the gaps in communications and collaboration, actively seeking to move their whole workforce towards a shared goal. Those that do can expect to see diverse perspectives in problem-solving as well as enhanced creativity and innovation within their firms.
How can technology help achieve this? iManage CMO, Dan Carmel, explores how firms and legal teams can tap into their collective intelligence to regain what is lost and win back their momentum in a hybrid world.
The chat bots are coming, and they’re a talkative bunch
Artificial intelligence is making tremendous strides, though is it ready to take on more legal work? Jack Shepherd. legal practice lead at iManage, looks into the symbiotic relationship between tech and legal services.
There’s no doubt that the uncannily human-sounding AI chatbot ChatGPT is impressive. It spits out incredibly accurate answers in a slightly unnerving conversational tone. But is this a mere party trick, or should lawyers be afraid?
Having posed some questions on specialist subjects (including law) and shared the output with a few experts, each one of them revealed to me that the response is impressive if negligent but for the caveats at the end.
Will ChatGPT make lawyers obsolete, poses Reuters? For now, it’s unlikely. Executives at Google (who it’s suggested could have released a similarly accomplished model if they so wanted) say the technology is still too immature for them to release a working model. There are issues with bias, toxicity, and a propensity for simply making information up. Maybe AI could replace a lawyer, but it would do a really terrible job.
So, what are the top use cases for Chat GPT for legal right now? First drafts of letters and short contracts perhaps. Ghostwriting articles for LPM? Indeed, there’s a risk here of looking for problems through the lens of a particular solution. This is always dangerous.
One size does not fit all
Modernisation isn’t always about implementing new technology. Adoption of tech is often touted as more of a priority than standardising processes but really, improving use of technology is based on standardising processes.
Looking to external industries for inspiration, the legal sector is finally catching-on to the benefits of project management. I still hear a lot of reference to ‘legal project management’ – personally, I’d prefer to lose the “legal” prefix and actually accept that the stuff lawyers do isn’t too fundamentally different from other professions.
The uptake of project management in law is a fairly new trend, but used effectively can allow legal professionals to achieve huge efficiencies. That’s not to say that law firms should be tempted to bring in a project management consultant, reports the Law Gazette in a recent article.
Have you tried being more digital?
Being ‘more digital’ is now a minimum requirement for law firms, the FT suggests in a recent law firm index for North America. Whereas advances in cloud data strategy may have been lauded as innovation prior to covid, relentless progress towards a digital-first approach is now the expected.
With transition to a truly digital-first law firm comes even bigger challenges such as security. A modern security culture isn’t just about having an IT team with their finger on the pulse and the occasional training session. Employees must embrace the ways that company data is accessed, used, stored, and shared.
Above all, security measures cannot hinder users. Seamless access with the maximum degree of data protection achieves the desired balance between accessibility and security.
Download the latest iManage security eBook to learn why a moderns security culture matters.
Futurist legal predictions that completely miss the point
Bionic lawyers might be touted as the future of legal services, but it’s important to remember that legal tech exists to serve people and not the other way around – says Jack Shepherd, legal practice lead at iManage.
There was an article in The Times recently about lawyers being implanted with bionic chips (yes, really). A report commissioned by the Law Society of England and Wales – titled ‘Neurotechnology, Law and the Legal Profession’ – suggested that brain implants might keep those billable hours in check by switching to a ‘billable units of attention’ enforced by an implanted bionic chip. No more wiggling your mouse to appear online for another few minutes, then.
I hate to be a killjoy, especially when mind-control via neuro-implantation is on the cards, but I’m pretty sure that most lawyers are still using word processing tools to manage multi-million dollar cross-border transactions? We might be a bit far off from being plugged into the Matrix.There is so much we need to fix in how law is practiced – doing things like jumping to bionic chips often has the effect of alienating the people that are actually practising law. They think – “why are we talking about bionic chips if it still takes 5 minutes for my computer to start up in the morning?” And they have a point.
The true value of legal tech is making life easier
Artificial Lawyer may have hit the nail on the head with their judgement of the current status quo, “In large commercial law firms there is only one rule that really counts – stay busy.”
If progress is about working smarter not harder, then securing new tech is often an exercise in ‘proving return on investment (ROI)’. It is a typical ask of innovation teams in law firms to put metrics and numbers on the advantages of a new technology tool they are considering. For example, hypothetically: “This will save one hour per day – multiply that by five associates, each transaction takes 50 days, by the 50 transactions we do a year – that’s 12,500 hours we are saving per year.”
These statistics never add up and it really wouldn’t matter even if they did. For one, the processes you are benchmarking them against are often ill-defined and disparate anyway. Associates will tell you that their workday can depend on the whims of partners rather than tasks that can be tracked.
In fact, it’s estimated that 61% of the average professional’s workday is spent doing ‘work about work’. It’s a huge time and money sink, costing companies around $7k per employee, per month – a problem that iManage Tracker was built to solve.
It’s interesting to compare this with legal teams and law firms that are defining higher level metrics, such as ‘time to agreement’, and have defined all the processes that are needed to get to agreement. They can pinpoint exactly what is increasing their headline metric, making informed and confident business decisions.
In the meantime, I agree that while you should try and look for some ROI, it might be enough to look at an outcome other than profitability such as – “how can we make life less hellish for lawyers and clients?” That still requires you to define what exactly is making it hellish (and let’s hope it’s not bionic chips quite yet).
The adoption of legal tech isn’t as straightforward as ‘build it and they will come’
Moving fast but not too fast is the balance that firms need to strike when it comes to legal tech adoption – according to Jack Shepherd, legal practice lead, iManage.
Implementing new tech requires effort, skill, and foremost for people to care. The foundations of adoption should be based around people and process, in tandem with tech. Only when the foundations are there can the tech be layered on top. Lawyers will never adopt something new unless they can see that the value it offers outweighs the burden of changing behaviours and ways of (not) working in the first place. I discuss ways to get users to overcome that burden in a webinar for UKLTA which you can watch here.
Legal Tech. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
In a recent round-up of the Legal Innovators California event, Richard Tromans is reminded of the well-known Bill Gates quote: ‘We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
When NLP and machine learning tools were first introduced as ways to reduce time spent on process-heavy review tasks there was a lot of skepticism, fear even. Six years later at the same California event these forms of technology were seen as completely normal, and part of the natural industry conversation. These kinds of tools have still not really broken through in legal, but we need to think carefully before underestimate the change they will bring in the longer terms.
When introducing tech, you will often hear the same apprehensive sound bites; “people will never” or “everyone will insist on doing it differently”. You must factor these things into your tech adoption plan. Accept them too willingly and inconsistencies creep in and cause complications. You could try and remove alternative avenues. Or you can get top-down support to dictate things being done in a particular way. Just don’t give up too quickly.
How can we influence adoption?
Look for the areas where legal tech directly affects revenue. At JFK Law, moving document management to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud was a big cost-saving win. With it being routine for cases to take place over a period of years, smarter ways of working created small wins for staff, and those small wins add up to big efficiency gains for the firm.
Until next time, keep celebrating the human component of knowledge, the people and process that ensure tech investments make a difference.
Legal technology needs a culture of knowledge
It’s time to reinvent ad hoc processes in law firms – particularly in the knowledge management space – according to Jack Shepherd, legal practice lead at iManage.
In Kenneth Jones’ recent article for Legal Evolution, he sets out a compelling argument that process (automated or otherwise) can still benefit from the personal touch. Indeed, you will hear no argument from me that what makes knowledge work is the combination of human and digital efforts.
Streamlining knowledge workflows or happy accidents
What I do find curious is that there is a distinction between standard processes and designing workflows. So little of how lawyers do their day-to-day work is designed. Processes have sprung up by accident and continue to do so. In many places, it’s not like somebody said: “this is the best way of doing things” – the process was just stumbled upon.
This is why adopting and using new processes and tools is such a skill. People are so used to organic processes that they think nothing can be defined and are suspicious when you restrict the ability to re-invent things every time you do them. If we can strive for rigour in streamlining knowledge workflows, we reduce inefficiencies in knowledge transfer and measure knowledge productivity and its true impact.
The new knowledge-sharing culture
In a recent interview with Briefing, I shared how you can wish upon a digital transformation all you want, but it will still only come about by rethinking knowledge structures and enabling collaboration and connectivity.
My exact words were: “hybrid working has actually been a positive for knowledge overall – that might seem counterintuitive because you can’t physically go to ask a knowledge management person or another lawyer at the office for help. It requires more structure, like a pre-arranged meeting. That’s actually an opportunity to re-design how knowledge sharing works. There’s no reason to think serendipity, or incidental, in-person knowledge sharing, was ever the best method for sharing knowledge.”
Curating a modern technology stack
When you build out your modernisation plan as an organisation, you will be entertaining many conversations about the tools and technology that will get you and your colleagues there. In a highly regulated industry such as legal, security is a prerequisite of that conversation. Still, when we reflect on that need for a cultural rethink in handling knowledge, modernisation requires balancing security and accessibility – it’s where your day-to-day needs to meet the technology you use at the intersection of collaboration and productivity. Until next time, build out your culture around knowledge.
Making time for legal tech
iManage’s legal practice lead, Jack Shepherd, makes the case for the legal sector to catch up with other industries when it comes to technological prowess.
Have you read all the prediction pieces for the year ahead? Ready to get down to business and make legal technology work to your advantage in 2022? Great. Let’s explore what is setting the early pace for legal technology discourse.
Big tech gets legal
Firstly, and a little bit meta, is the legality of tech itself – specifically, the intellectual property of tech that has taken one organisation time and money to research and develop, only for others to take that functionality and bake it into their systems. Google recently had to drop connected speaker functionality that Sonos pioneered several years prior. A recent article in Tech Crunch takes an interesting look at the practice of tech giants and the legal routes available to the David’s in this Goliath scenario.
No time for legal tech
It likely comes a no surprise that (some) lawyers don’t want to engage in legal tech. As Artificial Lawyer reports, “new research by Thomson Reuters shows that most US lawyers are not that excited about committing non-billable time to legal tech implementation, innovation, KM, or alternative delivery models.” The headlines always underplay the nuance and reality of where the specialist work of legal tech adoption, implementation and even knowledge management happens within an organisation. Does that mean transformation, tech solutions, and new methodologies are unimportant to a firm or organisation? No. The business objectives are almost certainly going to be different to those of the individual legal practitioner, given that their compensation methods and measures of success are different.
Time for legal tech
And as if by magic, we also find the flipside in a recent publication. Lawyer Monthly sets out the need for modernisation in a recent article with the opening gambit – “despite mounting pressure to change, the legal world remains one of the last bastions of anti innovation.”
Legal tech: outcomes, not outputs from the frontline
You read a lot about the doom and gloom of tech and big law. I just got off a conversation with an associate who talked about how a solution had transformed how they work with their clients. They said many associates refuse to work with partners who don’t want to use the tool. It’s time for change.
A knowledge scoop from the legal tech community
Picking up on conversations happening at legal industry events, iManage’s legal practice lead Jack Shepherd presents insights and lessons currently being gleaned in legal tech.
Events season is upon us, and while it’s not quite in full swing under the circumstances, it’s certainly giving it a good go. A day without Zoom, imagine! In hotel function rooms worldwide, presentations and collaboration sessions generate lively discussion amongst peers. Insights are shared over coffee (or something stronger) in conference hall corners, and well crafted workshops drill down into the details. When it comes to making knowledge work in law firms or corporate legal departments, the best way to achieve progress within the industry is to connect and communicate. Let’s explore what connects the legal tech community this month.
It’s good to talk
Connecting with people is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. Get me speaking about legal technology, and I’ll likely mention two things pretty quickly. First, adoption of legal technology is a huge issue. Second, speaking to the people who will use the solutions is the number one success hack to delivering an effective legal technology initiative. Here, I share four key reasons why talking to your users (or legal tech users) is the only way to deliver great outcomes.
Making a tech connection
In a November Artificial Lawyer article about the evolution of application programming interfaces (APIs), Josh Blandi explores how tech’s connectivity joins the data dots. It is certainly true that connecting systems together will allow firms to build up a holistic data strategy and break down silos. On this subject, however, more talk is required beyond mere technical aspects. We need to focus on the “so what” questions around APIs. For example, what overall experience are we trying to offer to a user when we connect two systems together? Does it make sense to connect the systems, or are we doing it just for the sake of it?
Lessons learned from when email was the new kid on the block
In a similar and almost certainly API-led vein of connectivity, it is interesting to see that Facebook’s Workplace product now connects with Microsoft Teams. Like email before it, Teams is a natural extension of content and communications that need to be managed in a matter-centric way, compliant with your organisation’s policy on governance and security. But Teams is also a different beast from email. It does calls, communication, document collaboration, automation (with Power Automate) and project management (with Planner). Increasingly firms are thinking about how to leverage this vast ecosystem of new tooling in a way that doesn’t overwhelm users.
Until next time, stay safe, but connected.
Four ways to solve the top pain points in deal execution
Jack Shepherd, legal practice lead at iManage, says transaction management and e-signature platforms can help to eliminate many of the pain points around deal execution.
Signing, closing and execution processes in transactions can be a nightmare for legal professionals. The good news is that there are ways of managing this chaos. By addressing some of the top pain points, lawyers can simplify the way they manage legal transactions.
- Managing the process
The first pain point is around how to manage the transaction itself. Many lawyers use Microsoft Word documents to manage even the most complex transactions.
But Word documents become out of date from the moment they’re sent as an email attachment. They have no way of notifying people of upcoming deadlines, nor do they provide a point of access for the transaction documents. They rely on updates being funnelled through one person: a single source of failure. Processes quickly fall apart if Word is used to manage complex transactions involving counterparties spread across locations.
Moving to an online transaction management solution can help. Everybody can benefit from a single source of truth, editable by anyone, that acts as both a project tracker and document storage facility. This is a major upgrade from Word that results in fewer clogged inboxes.
- Collecting signatures
Until the increase in popularity of e-signatures in 2020, the process around collecting signatures had remained largely untouched since the advent of email.
The process starts with a lawyer extracting ‘signature packets’ (the collection of signature pages a given signatory needs to sign) from near-final documents. Once prepared, the signature packets will be sent to their respective signatories. Once the lawyer has received all signatures, they must merge the signed pages with the final document.
Each of these steps requires a granular understanding of ‘who needs to sign what’. They require a level of skill with PDF editing software that many lawyers struggle to attain. It’s incredibly easy to make mistakes. And when you do make mistakes, they’re often severe and embarrassing ones.
Modern transaction management software can help here by automating most of these steps, lessening the chance for errors.
- Working with e-signatures
E-signature platforms have added huge efficiencies to the closing process. However, they give rise to their own challenges.
For example, most e-signature platforms apply a digital certificate to the resulting document when it is signed. This means that the document cannot be amended after signature.
But in most complex transactions, it is common for signatures to be collected before the document is signed, and for signatures previously collected to be merged into the final document. That flow is made harder with the presence of a digital certificate.
Again, transaction management software exists to provide a workflow fit for a complex closing process that gets the best out of these e-signature platforms.
- Producing closing bibles
The final pain point is around getting the executed documents to everybody involved, once the transaction is complete. This is known as producing the closing bible.
This process is manual and easy to over-engineer. It requires lawyers again to harness their PDF editing skills to combine all documents together and send them out.
But people overengineer this process because it’s so manual. I’ve heard horror stories of hard copy documents laid out in a conference room, neatly scanned and sorted – only for cleaning staff to move and rearrange the documents overnight. Other incidents include people leaving too long to prepare the bibles and then forgetting where all the executed documents were stored.
A transaction management platform all but eliminates these kinds of episodes. Because documents can be tracked directly in such a platform, it takes only a few clicks to gather and send all executed documents to anybody who needs them.
Clients expect deals to be executed efficiently, accurately and in a timely manner. Thanks to new technologies such as transaction management and e-signature platforms, lawyers can eliminate many of the pain points around deal execution they have suffered over the last few decades – much to their relief, and to the benefit of all involved.
