How to Leverage Law Firm Automation in 2024

Ready to implement automation for your law firm? Here are the top six ways lawyers can use automation right now:

What is Legal Workflow Automation?

Legal workflow automation allows law firms to efficiently accomplish routine activities, like data entry, payment follow-ups, and contract drafting. This lets lawyers dedicate their focus to higher-level tasks that require their legal expertise—saving time on non-billable tasks in the process.

“Automation is the best way to save time, which means automation makes you money,” as per Sam Mollaei, Esq of Mollaei Law. “The more you automate, the more you save time, the more money you make.”

Why Automate Repetitive Tasks: Benefits For Legal Professionals

According to the 2024 Legal Technology Survey by Meritas, over 50 percent of law firms plan to increase their technology investments in document automation systems.

That’s because legal automation, including workflows beyond document management, has a number of proven benefits that law firms already enjoy today:

• Reduce loss of revenue through non-billable hours
• Reduce overhead costs for manual work
• Prevent human error
• Enhance client experience

How to Implement Law Firm Automation: Six Areas to Explore

1. Client Intake and Management

Taking in new leads is a multi-step process that adds several hours of non-billable work to your firm’s day-to-day routine.

The initial phase usually involves entering their information into your CRM, briefing your intake team, and sending an email or SMS update to your new prospect. When these steps are done, your intake team then moves on to other low-level tasks like organizing documents into folders and updating entries to their project management system.

With automation, the vast majority of administrative tasks can be completed within minutes—without a human operator pulling the strings.

You can use an automation tool like Zapier to easily create automation workflows that string together two or more apps from your software stack. This includes lead management tools, booking software, email marketing platforms, and even legal answering services.

One of the apps functions as the “trigger,” whereas the rest of the apps will automatically perform actions if your specified conditions are met.

To better understand how this process works, take a look at pre-built templates that are ready to deploy with a few tweaks.

If you can’t find templates with services you use, feel free to change them using Zapier’s drag-and-drop workflow editor. Or, use the AI tool to instantly create a workflow tailored to your needs using only text prompts.

2. Document Management

Apart from the client intake process, plenty of document-related manual processes can also be streamlined with the right automation and legal AI tools.

Document management is one of the focal points of countless law firm automation initiatives. The challenging part is finding the right tools that can help with your specific automation goals.

Zapier, for instance, lets you automatically upload legal documents to your cloud-based storage service, internal messaging app, or legal practice management software.

Other AI tools like ChatGPT, CoCounsel, and Diligen lets you take advantage of automation for advanced tasks, including contract summarization, document creation, and proofreading. Just be mindful not to explicitly use AI or automation tools for legal research.

3. Automate Review Requests

Client reviews are among the most effective assets law firms can use for marketing. They help you raise brand awareness, boost the confidence of potential clients, and emphasize aspects of your legal service that set you apart from the competition.

Aside from an automation tool like Zapier, automated review requests require two things: a CRM or project management system that tracks client status updates and a messaging service (email or SMS).

For example, on Zapier, you can configure an automated review request workflow that sends an SMS via Textline whenever a client’s billing status is set to “Paid.”

Tip: Consider adding a time delay before sending the automated review requests. This will help you avoid sending too many emails within a 24-hour period, which can be your one-way ticket to the spam folder.

4. Legal Billing and Follow Up on Outstanding Payments

Using the same automation workflow as review requests, you can also set up automatic follow-up messages to clients with overdue payments.

This requires a clear-cut collection process—starting with your debt collection letter templates and protocols for handling disputes. And wherever your skills or direct involvement aren’t required, that’s where incorporate automation.

Again, you can use Zapier to create an automation workflow that sends multiple versions of your collection letter depending on urgency. These emails can be sent separately on a time delay or changed depending on actions, like partial payments or payment disputes.

Aside from Zapier, services like PayPal and Stripe come with built-in tools that can automate reminders for unpaid invoices past their due dates. However, these tools are limited in terms of the customizability of conditions, channels, or the actual reminder message.

5. Client Communications

Plenty of law firms put a lot of non-billable time into communicating with leads and existing clients. Without automation, this can lead to bottlenecks in processes like client intake, e-discovery, and client support.

Remember, most legal clients are driven by urgency.

Prospects need quick, straight answers that will help them decide whether or not you’re the right lawyer for the job. Existing clients, on the other hand, need reassurance that your team is always ready and available to assist.

To automate client communications, you can create automated messaging workflows with Zapier or deploy an intelligent chatbot that addresses your potential clients’ common concerns.

For this, consider investing in live chat software like:

• LawDroid
• Smith.ai
• Facebook Messenger

In addition to chatbots and automated messages, there are other ways to leverage automation for client communications.

For example, use AI-powered tools like Whisper Transcription, Sonix, and Veritone to make transcriptions more efficient and cost-effective. If your law firm caters to multilingual audiences, use tools like Pairaphrase, BeringAI, and DeepL to automate translations for client-facing materials.

6. Legal Marketing Automation

Finally, small firms can use automation to reach legal marketing milestones without hiring an in-house marketing team.

This covers a wide range of marketing activities that require a lot of time and effort, but don’t need your legal expertise to be effective.

Some examples are:

• Use email marketing automation to set up email sequences for client onboarding or continuous lead nurturing.
• Automatically curate and share relevant content across distribution channels.
• Set an automated posting schedule on social media that aligns with your target audience’s most active times.
• Automate lead segmentation by running surveys or tracking website interactions over time.

Of course, you can get better results in less time by outsourcing your marketing from a full-service agency with a proven record of success in the legal industry. Just be sure to do your research, set a budget, and understand your law firm’s marketing goals before working with an agency.

5 Legal Automation Tools to Streamline Your Workflow

Whether you’re looking to automate client management or legal marketing, the results heavily rely on the automation technology you use.

That said, here are the top five legal automation tools you should consider:

1. Zapier

Zapier is a flexible automation platform with a long list of use cases for law firms. It supports over 7,000 third-party integrations—from CRM solutions to payment processing services—that you can chain together to build your own automated workflow.

2. IFTTT

IFTTT is a viable Zapier alternative that also lets you build automation workflows by connecting multiple apps and services. While it offers a simpler interface than Zapier, it’s more limited in terms of customization and third-party integrations.

3. GetResponse

GetResponse is a comprehensive email marketing platform with automation features baked in. You can use the drag-and-drop workflow builder to set up automated campaigns, utilize push notifications, and save time with pre-built newsletter templates.

4. Lawmatics

Lawmatics is a CRM platform designed specifically for law firms. It can help you deploy automated workflows for a variety of tasks, from client management to legal marketing.

5. CoCounsel

CoCounsel is one of the most robust generative AI assistants developed for lawyers. It can help you save hours on different tasks, like extracting contract data, document drafting, summarizing contracts, generating deposition outlines, and more.

Parting Tips: How to Execute Your First Legal Process Automation

Before you go, here are a handful of parting tips to make sure you get the most out of your law firm automation efforts:

• Identify your biggest productivity bottlenecks. Work with your legal team to determine time-consuming, manual tasks that bog down your productivity.
• Organize your target tasks by priority. Sort your tasks based on how they affect not just your productivity, but also your firm’s profitability.
• Choose the right tools. Identifying and organizing your must-automate tasks allows you to select automation tools that accomplish your objectives without breaking your budget.
• Build your law firm automation plan. If possible, use or modify pre-built automation templates to learn the best practices, avoid mistakes, and save even more time.
• Keep your team on the same page. Before rolling out automation protocols, hold a discussion with everyone who will be affected to smoothen the adoption process — including paralegals and agents in charge of phone calls.
• Analyze the results and make fine adjustments. Finally, track and evaluate the real-world effects of automation to refine your strategy over time.

Law firm automation lets you take your non-billable hours back and spend them on tasks that actually require your expertise and bring cash to the table. 

From a growth standpoint, working with a seasoned law firm marketing agency also yields the same benefits. Not only will you get more hours back, holistic law firm marketing will also win you more business — all while you focus solely on billable work. 

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