At law firms, the simplest automation can make the biggest difference. There’s probably a tool for just about every part of the job.
Running a law firm involves a lot more than practicing law. There are clients to communicate with, documents to manage, appointments to schedule, invoices to send, signatures to collect, and approximately 47 things someone needs to remember before lunch.
Thankfully, there’s software that can help with a lot of it.
Law firms commonly use technology for practice management, client intake, document management, accounting, scheduling, communication, and electronic signatures. The specific tools vary from firm to firm, but the goal is usually the same – spending less time managing the process and more time doing the work.
Sometimes, the simplest automation makes the biggest difference.
Take something as basic as collecting signatures. If a firm needs 30 clients to sign the same document, someone could prepare 30 separate signature requests and send them one at a time.
Or they could use Adobe Acrobat’s Send in Bulk feature.
The firm prepares the document once, adds the recipient list, and sends it. Adobe then creates a separate, independent agreement for each recipient.
Each client receives their own document. They don’t see the other recipients, and each agreement has its own audit report. This can turn a repetitive administrative task into a few straightforward steps.
This can be especially useful for documents your firm sends frequently, such as client acknowledgements, authorization releases, and other standardized forms that need to be signed by multiple clients.
Here’s another part we really like: you can track everyone from the bulk send.
For a legal assistant or virtual assistant managing dozens of clients, that visibility can be especially useful. Instead of wondering who has signed, who still needs to sign, and whether someone’s document got lost somewhere in the shuffle, the status is all in one place.
Going with “I’m pretty sure they signed that” is not exactly a great document-management system.
That’s why the software should do the repetitive work.
Adobe’s bulk-signing feature is just one example of how law-firm software can take a task that is repetitive and time-consuming and make it easier to manage.
The best technology doesn’t necessarily eliminate a job altogether. Sometimes, it simply removes the parts of the job that never needed a human in the first place.
That gives your team more time for things that actually require judgment, expertise, communication, and a human touch.
The Betties Take
At Back Office Betties, we’re proponents of technology that makes people’s jobs easier, not technology that makes people wonder why they’re doing three times as much work just to use the technology.
When asking yourself, what software does a law firm use for automating tasks and what your firm should adopt, it is important to keep in mind that the best software should help your team keep track of what needs to happen, who needs to do it, and what happens next. When those tools can automate the repetitive tasks, even better.
Let’s face it, your legal assistant probably has better things to do than send the same document 30 times.
Prepare it once and let the software do the rest.
