How Document Automation Tools Could Save Money For Your Legal Department?

Nataly Koma
Case.one
Published in
5 min readJun 13, 2019

Lawyers spend 40% of their time at work creating typical contracts. This means that highly qualified professionals spend about 4 hours per day just transferring information from one document to another. This is extremely inefficient.

Contracts are the lifeblood of every business. Robust data analytics, e-billing, and continuous improvement have long been ingrained in most business processes. However, just recently have legal departments begun to understand the value they are losing by not automating their contracting process via document constructors.

A document constructor is a unique software solution that automates drawing up contracts. This saves time, reduces financial costs, and creates a document optimized for a specific situation. Document constructors are universal tools that allow a legal department to optimize their time and a company’s money.

Here are a few reasons why your legal department needs a document constructor.

1. Stop the document routine

Eighty percent of the company documents are routine, but lawyers still have to check them 4 to 5 hours per day. In addition, two billable days per week are consumed by manual data entry. This is inefficient and causes a company to lose money.

There are some templates that allow lawyers to create a legal document in a few minutes without the need for a manual process. One such template, Doc.one, allows lawyers to systematize the company’s document database by using automated forms for documents that are used often. How does it work?

The process is simple. You just need to create an account and you will be automatically stored in Doc.one. Once you access the platform, you can use templates and will have the ability to create documents from customized templates. These templates will based on a questionnaire. Also, you will have the ability to save commonly used blocks of texts to your personal library; you will not need to search for them every time you create a document. The platform can be used in multiple languages. It can also adapt to workflow and will customize forms for each user. Instead of creating contracts for 3 to 4 hours, lawyer can complete the process in just a few minutes. This will eliminate the routine and allow a lawyer to engage in higher intellectual matters.

2. Avoid human errors

Do you know that 20% of lawyers’ documents contain errors and inaccuracies? Automation could help avoid these errors. Thanks to a flexible template and no manual data entry, the contracts created in the document constructor are created without errors.

Contracts are developed by specialists of the legal department of each company and don’t allow legal changes by other employees. Doc.one helps to avoid human errors by automatically filling in data from CRM.

3. Identify weaknesses and optimize workflow

Two of the most common contracting challenges are when departments lose money during the process of creating them and when the outcome achieved falls short of what the legal department desired. To achieve the desired result, it is important to first identify the weaknesses that you are seeking to improve.

You should answer some basic questions about the process of creating contracts in your legal department. These questions include:

- Are you seeing delays in the approval, negotiation or signature processes?

- Are lawyers using the wrong templates or backup positions?

- What processes do you want to speed up?

Be sure you have a good grasp of your end-to-end contracting process, as well as knowledge of the gaps and friction points that result in a less-than-optimal contracting process; this knowledge is vital when you decide to start using automation program.

Once you have answered these questions, you are ready for automation. Doc.one will help you make the process of creating contracts as easy as filling out a questionnaire. This will optimize workflow and make your lawyers more efficient.

4. Saving time and money for your company

In our previous article, we talked about how a company could save $10,800 per year on lawyers’ work due to using document constructors.

Now a few more facts. The US lawyers spend only 30% of each eight-hour workday for billable hours. That’s about 2.4 hours per day. The lawyers spend the rest of the day creating contracts, licensing activities, creating and sending invoices, and so on. Doc.one will reduce costs and increase the profitability of your legal department.

5. Storing all documents on one cloud

Doc.one keeps all your documents on a single cloud. In addition, the history of their edits and the users who opened them is stored on the cloud. You can also add an unlimited number of users. This ensures that the lawyers from your legal department always have access to contracts and will be able to find them quickly.

Here are some benefits of storing documents on one cloud:

  • The space and opportunity of cloud storage are increasing. With cloud storage, companies can buy smaller storage packages and increase their digital storage space.
  • Safety and security. Data is stored on distributed servers. Data is backed up and stored on multiple servers in secure data centers. These centers have a high level of reliability and information is stored at multiple sites. High reliability is achieved by automatically creating multiple replicas of data that are stored on separate independent servers. This will reduce the costs of the company for the creation and maintenance of IT infrastructure. This helps to increase the flexibility of business processes. In addition, there are different roles on the platform. Some lawyers can create templates, and others can make changes to them.
  • Document history. Thanks to the cloud, expenses previously spent on maintaining a physical space are eliminated.
  • Mobility. Various services can be accessed through Internet-connected devices, whether they are desktop computers or smartphones or tablets. This speeds up the communication and file access processes.

Conclusions

A routine reduces the efficiency of, not only every specialist, but also jurisprudence as a whole — driving away potential future lawyers, current lawyers, and clients. The ability to use document constructors is salvation for lawyers and legal departments. Instead of spending hours drawing up the same types of contracts, lawyers will be able to do it in just a few minutes. That is a worthy investment, is it not? Platforms, like Doc.one, are the future, and that is a fact. The future of your legal department is your choice to make.

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