Traditional manual processes that have long been commonplace in the legal function can be time-consuming, error-prone, and hinder the department’s overall productivity. However, with the advent of innovative legal workflow management software, the legal industry has been on the forefront of a profound revolution.
Legal workflow management software, sometimes called a legal workflow platform or legal workflow system, gives the legal function a faster and more visible way to handle the work the business sends its way.
What is Legal Workflow Management Software?
Legal workflow management software refers to a legal technology solution designed to optimize and streamline the workflow within in-house legal departments. This type of software offers a comprehensive set of tools and features that enable legal professionals to better streamline and manage their work.
The main purpose of legal workflow software is to automate repetitive tasks by reducing the administrative burden, allowing legal professionals to focus on more critical and complex aspects of their work.
What Is Legal Workflow Management?
Legal workflow management is the practice of designing, running, and tracking the steps legal work goes through, from the first request to resolution. A legal workflow is the set of steps for one type of work, such as an NDA request, a marketing review, or a privacy question. Legal workflows set out who does what, in what order, with what information, and when approval is needed.
Each legal software workflow follows the same pattern. A request comes in, the system checks it against legal’s rules, and the work is routed, tracked, and reported on. A legal workflow management system runs those steps automatically, so lawyers spend less time chasing details and more time on the work that needs their judgment.
Why You Should Automate Legal Workflow Processes
Today, businesses are requiring increasing amounts and growing types of legal support. This demand however, does not often translate to more resources in the legal department to meet that increase. This is partly due to the expectation that legal should do more with less, and partly because most legal teams lack the data to demonstrate their value to the business and to justify needing additional resources to meet company goals.
As a result, the business either becomes dissatisfied with the turnaround times from legal, or the lawyers end up working in overdrive just to keep up, with high risks of burnout. Both effects are further aggravated by the inefficiency and opaqueness of legal workflows, which sets the business up to misunderstand legal, leading to the dreaded sentiment of “legal being the bottleneck”.
Common challenges include the time-consuming nature of manual processes, the risk of errors in repetitive tasks, difficulties in managing deadlines, and lack of standardization. These issues highlight the importance of workflow automation in improving consistency and visibility.
1. Activate Data & Visibility Over Services
Implementing legal workflow management software can effectively address these challenges where one of the most significant and unique advantages is their ability to activate data and visibility through dashboards and analytics to provide valuable insights into service performance. With Checkbox, you not only gain visibility over incoming requests, but can leverage powerful, customized reports to drill down into workload and capacity, and view data on request volume, type and status, SLAs, cycle times and more.
A legal workflow management report brings those numbers together in one view: how much work the business is asking for, how long it takes, who is carrying the load, and what is overdue.
The full picture for data is unlocked, where it not only enables better management and transparency to request for resources and demonstrate the value of legal but enables legal to come to the strategic table with unique business insights.
2. Better Business Experience & Optimization of Legal Work
Legal workflow software enables the legal team to move away from the manual, ad hoc collection, sorting and assignment of requests to creating a centralized intake channel. Legal requests are submitted via a standardized form, creating consistency and providing a streamlined way to capture information, build in controls and enable basic reporting.
In Checkbox, the platform goes beyond and enables an automated and intelligent intake and triage system by leveraging AI or a conditions and logic engine. Requests are automatically triaged to the most appropriate resource or lawyer based on considerations such as capacity, request complexity and specialization.
With Checkbox, business users can access the legal department through an AI-powered legal front door, making adoption and navigation easier than ever. Meet business users where they are (i.e. Slack, Teams, email, intranet portal & more), and leverage AI to allow a conversational experience for business users to submit their requests.
Legal AssistantDirect messageRunning intake and triage through a legal workflow automation system removes the manual management of requests. For legal teams, better intake and triage streamlines the submission and allocation of requests, ensuring lawyers are always working on tasks that are high value and best suited to them. Automated triage also unlocks the ability for non-legal requests to be automatically redirected to other parts of the business, removing administrative overhead and promoting collaboration.
3. Accelerated Request Resolution
By automating legal workflows, this can significantly fast-track the resolution of requests and enhance efficiency for the legal team. Self-service journeys can be created to guide business users through contracts, knowledge resources, policies, FAQs and more. This self-service approach fosters a culture of empowerment, allowing non-legal staff to obtain quick answers to their common queries without over-reliance on legal professionals.
With Checkbox’s AI-powered triage, requests that require lawyer advice or dedicated consultation can be automatically assigned to the most appropriate lawyer based on factors of capacity and specialization.
Use Cases of Legal Workflow Management Software
Legal workflow management software addresses a wide range of use cases within legal departments. Here are some of the key use cases that this software effectively addresses:
Common Features of Legal Workflow Management Software
The best legal workflow management software covers four groups of features:
Routing and Automation
- Conditional logic and routing
- AI Powered Workflows
- Streamlined task processing
- Workflow visualization
Intake and Collaboration
- Configurable forms
- AI Chatbot Assistant
- Email integration
- Collaboration tools
- Task delegation and collaboration
Tracking and Records
- Alerts and notification
- Audit trail
- Electronic signatures
Reporting and Integrations
- Dashboards and reporting
- Integrations with third-party software
- Data migration and backup
Where Legal Workflow Management Software Fits in the Legal Technology Stack
A legal workflow management system plays a central role within the legal technology stack. It connects other legal technologies and supports the overall role of legal operations. Here are some ways in which it fits in relation to other legal tech:
- AI Legal Front Door: An AI legal front door is where requests arrive, whether from email, Slack, Teams, or Salesforce. The legal workflow system sits behind it and runs the steps legal has defined, while matter management keeps the record.
- In-House Legal Software: While in-house legal software might handle specific tasks like legal research or case management, a legal case management software workflow usually stops at the case record. Workflow management software streamlines the end-to-end processes, including intake, triage, collaboration, automated document generation, and reporting. It acts as a bridge that ensures seamless communication and collaboration between different legal tools.
- Matter Management Software: Legal workflow management and matter management software are both essential components of a comprehensive system. Matter management, however, focuses more on organizing specific items like documents while legal workflow management software complements it by streamlining and automating the processes of matter management.
- Contract Lifecycle Management Software: By integrating legal workflow management software with contract lifecycle management, it provides a way for lawyers to automate, monitor and optimize the various stages of the contract lifecycle from creation to execution to renewal. Together, they offer features like task automation, deadline tracking, and collaboration tools, empowering legal teams to manage contracts with greater ease.
How Legal Workflow Management Software Works with Intake & Triage
Legal workflow management software plays a crucial role in streamlining and optimizing the intake and triage process for legal departments. Intake and triage refers to the process of receiving, managing and delegating legal requests from business users to the appropriate lawyer to resolve them.
With Checkbox, for example, users can access the legal department through an AI-powered legal front door, that allows the legal department to meet business users where they are. AI captures and clarifies each request where useful, and the workflow engine applies legal’s rules to route it to the relevant self-service tools, team, or lawyer. Intake and triage is usually the first workflow automation legal teams set up.
Request is raisedWhen a new request from the business comes in through the legal department, legal workflow management software acts as a central hub to receive and capture required information. This can be done through forms, emails or other communication channels that business users use to submit a request.
Once the information is collected, the software can triage the request by categorizing it based on predefined criteria and send it off to the right lawyer to resolve it. The software can also generate reports and analytics related to the intake and triage process, providing valuable insights. A good workflow for legal teams starts simple, with one or two request types, and grows as the data shows where the volume is.
How Checkbox Can Help
Checkbox is the AI Legal Front Door for in-house legal teams, with legal workflow management behind it. Requests arrive where the business already works, AI captures and clarifies them where useful, and legal’s rules decide where each one goes.
With Checkbox, you can build an AI legal front door or portal and guide business users through contract requests, knowledge, policies, FAQs and more. Streamline legal services, achieve efficiency and strengthen partnership with the business. Loved by legal and the business for our ease of use, features, and support, Checkbox helps companies like Allianz, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, and BMW transform their workflows and request management.
Centralize legal requests, automate processes, and gain real-time visibility, all in one platform. Book a demo to see how in-house legal workflow management software can transform your operations.
