A raft of UK law firms have been shortlisted for technology-related prizes in this month’s Business Leadership Awards.
In this article The Lawyer highlights some innovations specifically in the area of document management not only in the UK but also in the US, across Continental Europe and around the world.
Garrigues is shortlisted for the Best Firmwide Use of Technology award for its series of digital conversion initiatives known as Garrigues 20/20. The initiatives include Garrigues’ big data strategy, set up to help its lawyers be more productive and also to provide additional security when working with document filing systems.
In 2015, Garrigues created a new platform, DMS+, which automatically distinguishes relevant information from unimportant data and identifies ‘expert’ authors, ie those that provide the largest number of contributions and who publish an above-average number of documents. This saves time and improves the quality of the work on new matters or transactions.
The development of DMS+ provides access to an add-in integrated in all Office applications. This platform is in turn integrated with Garrigues’ financial management system and document management system, so that when a lawyer is working with a document saved in a client folder, relevant information is displayed automatically, according to the type of transaction involved.
The development of DMS+ provides access to an add-in integrated in all Office applications
In addition, all the documents in the files are analysed automatically and assessed according to their importance. All of these documents are given a highly visual star rating so that the lawyer can immediately identify key documents for the specific matter. Since identification is by experts, the professionals involved can be safe in the knowledge that the information suggested is always endorsed by persons who are familiar with the matter, with vast experience.
Automation software
Swiss firm Bär & Karrer has also made great strides towards improving efficiencies through the use of automation software provided by Contract Express in its corporate services centre in Zug.
In May 2016, ContractExpress trained the firm’s dedicated automation team of associates and trainees (the ADAS-team) in a two-day workshop. Enthused by the workshop, the ADAS-team immediately started automating documents. On their own initiative, they decided to gather at 7am every week to drive forward the automation of corporate documents.
After intensive months of programming, the firm’s corporate and notarial services team in Zug recently made the first incorporation of a company with fully automated document production in dual language (German and English). In the context of incorporation, the full set of documents necessary to register the new company in the Commercial Register is produced in one go, in German and English.
Bär & Karrer also implemented a firmwide roll-out of iManage in August 2015, revolutionising the filing of its documents and emails.
CMS, which last year moved into new London premises at Cannon Street where the use of technology is key, is also a document management trailblazer. In particular CMS recently undertook a comprehensive review of its technological requirements to give its fee-earners and staff the ability to engage creatively and collaboratively.
All fee-earners have been issued with the latest Surface Pro 3, a 24in screen and a wireless headset. Surface Pro 3s are one of the most advanced laptops available, and can function as a touch screen and an app-based tablet device.
It allows staff to screen-share with colleagues and hold video conferences from their desks. Staff can also annotate documents directly onto their Surface Pro and send this to the Document Centre (DOCE) or secretaries for processing.
The technology allows for total mobility, enabling staff to work at their desks, move into a meeting room or around the building or work remotely. Once in a meeting room, staff have the option to continue working on their Surface Pro’s or hook into the 55in screens in the meeting rooms if they are presenting to others. All participants then have a clearer view of the document or presentation that they’re working through and they can collaborate effectively.
An interactive development environment
Radiant Law entered the Business Leadership awards this year after it adapted an idea that is regularly used by developers but is less common in the legal market. Software developers have long had sophisticated toolsets in their interactive development environments (IDEs). Now Radiant Law has developed its own IDE for its lawyers, called Remarkable. Remarkable is a proprietary toolset developed by Radiant Law that extends Word with a new toolbar. With a full-time developer in the Ukraine (one of the firm’s six developers) working on the project, it has added more than 50 features.
‘Remarkable’ is a proprietary toolset that extends Word with a new toolbar
Remarkable is used by all the lawyers at Radiant to improve the value it can bring to clients (and removes much of the pain felt by the team): it speeds up turnaround times, improves the client experience and the time taken to close contracts; allows Radiant to deliver valuable insights into transactions quickly, including issue lists and obligation reports; helps the firm’s lawyers maintain clarity within the complexity of large contracts, leading to more robust agreements that better protect clients’ interests; and improves accuracy, catching errors typically found in contracts, thus improving the quality of contracts and letting the firm’s lawyers focus on the key concepts.
DWF recently implemented a new approach to document automation, called DWF Draft, across the business. DWF Draft enables the production of entire suites of legal documents, contracts and reports in significantly less time than it takes to complete manually, thereby increasing efficiency, reducing risk, improving the user experience and ultimately allowing DWF’s lawyers to focus on higher value work for clients, including complex negotiation and bespoke contract drafting.
The firm wanted to implement DWF Draft in the quickest possible timeframe and with maximum buy-in from its lawyers. To do this the firm needed to find a way to overcome the traditional struggle of engaging lawyers with technology, namely that they often see it as challenging their profession, a trend that can result in low return on investment of new solutions due to poor lawyer engagement.
Consequently, DWF needed to find a way to work more closely with its lawyers during the development process to fully understand the rationale for how they resource and deliver each legal process, and where this could be improved, to implement the new software successfully.
The ‘Lawyer whispering’ approach has resulted in DWF Draft becoming embedded throughout the business
To that end DWF developed a development and people engagement technique called ‘lawyer whispering’ to ensure that DWF Draft was successfully adopted across the business. Experts with a hybrid mix of legal, technology and consultancy skills worked alongside the firm’s lawyers to co-design automation solutions, ensuring that the new technologies are above all practical and valuable for the firm’s lawyers. By working side-by-side with lawyers to understand their needs, the development team was able to identify exactly which types of documents and processes would most benefit from automation, a method that increases the speed of uptake and ROI for the firm.
The ‘Lawyer whispering’ approach has resulted in DWF Draft becoming embedded throughout the business with remarkable speed, and the firm has automated 167 documents in the first 12 months since the technology was introduced.
On-brand marketing
Charles Russell Speechlys had been struggling with a problem for many years, specifically the efficient, consistent and accurate production of on-brand marketing documents. The firm had always relied on basic Word templates which were easily corrupted, or were regularly adapted by users to fit their personal preferences.
Content for pitches was gathered from numerous sources including the website, previous pitches, recent directory submissions, the firm’s deals database, and the legal directories. This meant that even creating a first draft of a pitch could take several hours, and there was little guarantee that the content would be accurate or completely up-to-date.
In addition, brand consistency was always an issue and the look and feel of documents would depend to a degree on who created them. The activity was also largely confined to the marketing team, which created a bottleneck for the creation of often time-sensitive documents.
Charles Russell Speechlys needed a tool that could assist users in generating a range of marketing documents and needed to: be easy to use and intuitive; be incorporated into existing software that the users were familiar with (MS Office) to enable easy editing; retain brand formatting regardless of the user’s technical capability; and allow signed-off and up-to-date content (text, diagrams, quotes and photographs) to be easily inserted into the documents.
PitchPerfect, developed by Enable, was identified as being the most appropriate and effective solution. It was designed to be fully integrated into Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, utilising their core features and preventing templates being corrupted. The system was new and not used yet by many firms, but clear benefits were identified.
“It looks so simple, but it really is very effective”
Charles Russell Speechlys had defined the need for a platform that was focused on improving the experience of all users in creating complex, image-driven documents. Over a 12-month period from May 2015 the marketing team worked with Enable to tailor every aspect of the tool to create a bespoke solution.
PitchPerfect is now a highly effective tool used by the entire firm. The bespoke Charles Russell Speechlys’ product works in Word and PowerPoint and includes 10 templates (briefing, case study, contact sheet, CV, deal sheet, delegate pack, descriptor, flyer, pitch and team sheet). All the templates can be formatted using set styles and content can be easily added. The extensive bank of content is stored in SharePoint, on the firm’s intranet, and can be quickly and easily edited by the marketing team at any time.
In short, it uses existing systems and skills to seamlessly produce high quality, accurate and consistent documents.
As one of the firm’s partners recently commented, “it looks so simple, but it really is very effective”.
The power of AI
At Paul Hastings the US firm has brought the power of artificial intelligence into play in a bid to increase efficiencies in relation to millions of documents. Paul Hastings has undertaken a project to take data analytics to the next level with a process that combines cutting-edge advances in statistical engineering and machine learning with the firm’s own methodology to provide a more accurate and efficient solution to derive information from large data sets.
Key word searches are typically used by lawyers to identify relevant information in large data sets. But this is a dated, ineffective, time consuming, and costly process. Even more advanced approaches, like predictive coding, are nothing more than keyword searching on steroids with low success rates.
Paul Hastings believes it is pushing the legal field into previously unforeseen corners of data science
In contrast, Paul Hastings believes it is pushing the legal field into previously unforeseen corners of data science. The firm assembled a team featuring Tom Barnett, a litigator and an industry-leading expert in data analytics, information governance, and eDiscovery to help us take our data analysis to another level.
The team also includes a data scientist, PhD mathematicians, computer scientists, and eDiscovery experts who leveraged best practices in other industries to create its own data analytics process.
The firm’s approach allows a small group to do the work normally handled by a large number of contract attorneys, who are typically engaged to review hundreds of thousands or often millions of potentially relevant documents, and provide better results.
The firm develops an understanding of the facts by identifying important documents early on and formulating strategic decisions based on the results. Its data team then talks with the lawyers working on the case to better understand why certain documents are or are not relevant, and add this knowledge to the models.
The firm is therefore offering its clients a valuable analytic service rooted in technical semantic models (networks of concepts and relationships), but that manifests as enhanced lawyering. This is a value proposition; it allows Paul Hastings to digest documents and make decisions much more quickly, drastically reducing the cost for its clients.
By way of example, a client collected several million documents requiring review. Using the traditional key word approach, a sample set of 50,000 documents containing multiple “search hits” was generated and reviewed for responsiveness by contract attorneys. Only 20 documents (0.04 per cent) were determined responsive or relevant.
Paul Hastings then created semantic models based on the handful of documents identified as being significant that generated 100 documents, out of which 40 were determined to be responsive, and 32 were deemed to be highly responsive.
It had an accuracy rate of 40 per cent, meaning the firm’s approach was 1,000 times more effective than the traditional approach.
A second model was then developed based on the initial results and further analysis which yielded a set of 423 documents, of which 271 were responsive and 163 were highly responsive, a 64 per cent accuracy rate.
To sum up, traditional methods resulted in the review of 50,000 documents by contract attorneys, who then found 20 relevant documents. Paul Hastings’ model resulted in the review of 423 documents by contract attorneys, who then found 271 relevant documents.
And since its models will continue to learn, the savings and efficiency will only increase as time goes on.
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