Improvement can come in many forms, but can perhaps be narrowed down to 2 main categories:

• Team – improve processes within the legal team / law firm (e.g. contract automation, matter management, knowledge management, process mapping)
• Customer/Client – improve the way legal services are consumed by the teams you support (e.g. self-service tools, intranets, training)

At LawHawk, we've helped both in-house teams and law firms on their legal operations journey, from planning and thinking about the problems you are trying to solve, right through to execution and management reporting.

Examples of how we may help you include:

If you have very document-intensive processes where a few people create a lot of documents regularly, we can automate the documents for you. You may be able to create packages of documents that generate from a single set of information.

Expected benefits include:

• 75% or more time savings
• Better consistency and quality, with less review required
• Flexibility for several people to do different parts of the process, or one person may do all or most of it
• Easier precedent management, with access to only the latest template versions from anywhere via our secure cloud portal
• Easier collaboration. By sharing a screen showing the interview questionnaire, two or more people can collaborate easily to draft documents in real time
• Very strong ROI – licence costs should be a fraction of the productivity gains you will see

If you have processes where many people need to create certain documents or need an answer or other information occasionally and independently, we can automate those to enable self-service.

Examples include:

• confidentiality agreements
• agreements for the supply of goods or services
• consultancy agreements
• information regarding the application of health & safety requirements to particular situations
• marketing sign-offs
• delegated authorities

You can see more about our Self-Service Solutions here.

We have introduced our customers to various matter management suppliers in the market and, where requested, we've helped them work out what they'd like to achieve with a matter management system, and then helped them to analyse their options to match their requirements.

There's no point paying for the most expensive solution in the market if you'll only use 10% of the functionality and could do what you need with SharePoint and free up budget for improvements in other areas too. 

But it's equally costly to go with a solution that can't do what you really need. 

We can help you get the results you need for the best value. 

Before any sort of automation or system is considered, it's important to understand what the current state of affairs is, and what the ideal state would be. While many teams can do the first part very well, it's often not that easy to do the second part.

Why? Because if you are not aware of what is and isn't possible with new and emerging technology, and you don't understand what's been tried before and has or hasn't worked, then what you're shooting for may be unduly restrictive or overly optimistic.

Particularly in relation to the latter, when you mix that with overly optimistic technology providers, we've seen teams spend many months working towards an unobtainable goal or a goal doesn't move the needle enough.

Given our immersion in the legaltech landscape, and having used (or helped others to use) many technologies ourselves, we can save you a lot of time and effort in mapping out what an ideal state might look like.

Delegations are a significant pain point for many organisations, and often are managed through a combination of Microsoft Word, Excel and/or Outlook. We can help improve this.

This can include the process of both creating new delegations (e.g. when a new role is created, or someone moves into a new position), or helping people to understand what delegation rules apply (e.g. who can authorise the entry into a new transaction).

For more on how we can help you manage your delegations, please see our Delegations Solutions here.

Many organisations are used to running approvals via a physical document, or sending and collating emails in Outlook. It’s a massive handbrake on the speed an organisation can work at, in the best of times.

Using Microsoft PowerAutomate or digital signing workflows for that process can be a great way to improve immediately. You can see more about our Approval Solutions offerings here.

We have always been big fans of digital signing. We use it regularly ourselves, and recommend it to our customers. We also help them to start using it effectively, whether for internal approval processes or contracts. The combination of document automation and digital signing with SharePoint is compelling.

You can see more about our Digital Signing Solutions here.

If legal instructions usual come in by email, phone or in-person instruction, it will be hard to assess, prioritise, allocate and manage remotely.

We can design a legal instruction intake form that can be embedded into your intranet or sent by email, allowing and ensuring your clients can give you all the information (including uploading attachments) you need to help them most efficiently and effectively.  This is a solution that can be implemented very quickly.

You can see more information on Our Legal Intake Forms solutions here

There are many features within Office 365 that lawyers can use to work more efficiently and effectively. You can see this webinar we did for the Centre for Legal Innovation for some examples of how an in-house legal team can use SharePoint and related applications. 

We can work with you and your IT team (or an external provider if required) to help design and implement an overall solution that includes strong knowledge management and template management.

For more information on how we can help you with Office 365, and link what we do into your Office 365 suite, please see here.

These are only some of the things we can do, and that we know we can do well. 

If you have other problems you need help with and need a quick solution that will work, we may be able to help identify the right solutions or other parties to help you.

We have first-hand experience with a range of other legal technologies that we can share with you. 

We also have many partners we can work with. If your challenges relate to your website, general IT support for remote working, SharePoint/Office 365, digital dictation, in-house matter management, sales and marketing or Google Ads, then we can let you know who we use to support those areas, and help arrange introductions.

Our focus is always on ensuring that our solutions work, and deliver the outcomes you need them to.