CASE STUDY

Woolworths Group Delivers Legal Advice At Scale With Checkbox Automation

Ben Langford
General Counsel at Woolworths Group
INDUSTRY
Supermarkets, Retail
DEPARTMENT
In-house Legal
COMPANY SIZE
215,000+
LEGAL TEAM SIZE
400+
ABOUT
Woolworths Group Limited is an Australian retail company with subsidiaries including Woolworths Supermarkets, BIG W, BMW, Dan Murphy's totalling to over 3,357 stores. It is the largest company in Australia by revenue and the second-largest in New Zealand.
OUTCOMES
Volume of manual, repeatable work reduced by up to 80%
60+ workflows automated across legal
Developed a service delivery model using intake & triage and self-service
The Challenge

Woolworths Group’s legal team faced growing pressure to deliver timely, efficient legal support across a large and diverse organisation, spanning Woolworths Supermarkets, BIG W, WooliesX, and the Everyday Market online marketplace. The team needed to service stakeholders at scale — without slowing down the business.

Much of legal’s work was manual and reactive, relying on email communication, siloed systems, and process-heavy approvals. Business stakeholders lacked visibility over their matters and were unable to self-serve, leading to delays and unnecessary back-and-forth.

Adding to the pressure, the demerger of Endeavour Group had increased the volume of securities trading requests, placing a major burden on the company secretarial team — a process that had been managed manually and was now unsustainable at scale.

At its core, Woolworths Legal needed a way to:

  • Automate repeatable tasks like NDAs and service agreements
  • Integrate legal support into business users’ day-to-day workflows
  • Improve intake, triage, and transparency — without relying on IT support
  • Shift the legal team’s focus from admin-heavy work to high-impact strategic matters
The Solution

Woolworths deployed Checkbox’s no-code workflow automation platform, giving the legal team the power to build scalable, self-serve tools for the business — without writing a single line of code or leaning on IT.

The team first focused on automating intake and triage, allowing legal requests to be submitted through a central “legal front door.” Checkbox pre-populated key information, routed matters to the right lawyer based on expertise and availability, and reduced the need for repeated manual follow-up.

“Without the need for technical skills or reliance on IT resources, Checkbox has enabled us to automate intake and triage, pre-populate information up front and allocate matters to the lawyers with the right expertise and availability – without clients even asking.”

Beyond triage, the legal team used Checkbox to build a suite of apps for common, high-volume use cases, including:

  • A Data Incident Application that standardises privacy incident reporting and escalation
  • Automated first drafts of service agreements and complete automation for simple documents like NDAs
  • Seller onboarding tools for the Everyday Market platform, including legal agreements
  • A securities trading approval app, enabling scale after the Endeavour demerger

Checkbox became a centralised hub for legal matters, allowing business users to submit requests, view their progress, see which lawyer is assigned, and access all related documents — without switching between platforms or relying on email.

“There is not an automated answer to every question, of course. Requests will be triaged to our team wherever appropriate through a legal front door, providing clients with visibility of where their matter is up to, which lawyer is in charge and a home for documents created through the tool.”

Most importantly, the tools were built around the needs of business users — not just legal’s internal workflows.

“The best solutions we’ve developed are those that are focused on solving our business colleagues’ problems, rather than just our own in legal.”
“The best solutions we’ve developed are those that are focused on solving our business colleagues’ problems, rather than just our own in legal,” he adds. “The share trading policy app was critical, as following the demerger of Endeavour from Woolworths, our company secretarial team simply would not have had the scale to handle securities trading requests resulting from the securities split.”
Outcomes
Outcome Detail
Manual Work Reduction Volume of manual, repeatable work reduced by up to 80%
Workflow Automation 60+ workflows automated across the legal function
Service Model Developed a legal service delivery model using intake, triage & self-service
Stakeholder Experience Business users can track requests, see assigned lawyers, and access documents without email follow-up
Data Incident Handling Faster, more consistent privacy incident reporting via structured intake and escalation
Securities Trading at Scale Post-Endeavour demerger, Checkbox enabled the company secretarial team to manage share trading approvals at scale

In just a short time, Checkbox has transformed legal operations across the Woolworths Group. With self-service tools and smart automation in place, the legal team has significantly reduced manual workload and administrative overhead.

Checkbox now serves as a one-stop-shop for many legal processes, streamlining how work is submitted, processed, and tracked. One of the standout outcomes has been the reduction in legal touchpoints for common document types like NDAs and service agreements — freeing up the team to focus on complex matters.

The Data Incident Application has improved the consistency and speed of privacy incident handling across the business. By guiding users through a structured intake and escalation process, it ensures appropriate action is taken with less confusion or risk.

The securities trading approvals app proved critical following the Endeavour demerger, allowing the company secretarial team to process requests at scale — something that would have been unmanageable using the old manual process.

Perhaps one of the most impactful results is the improved user experience for business stakeholders. Rather than chasing updates or navigating multiple systems, they now engage with legal tools embedded in their own workflow — making legal support feel faster, easier, and more integrated.

“Checkbox gives us the framework to let the legal team spend its time on motivating work and high-value matters.”
“Without the need for technical skills or reliance on IT resources, Checkbox has enabled us to automate intake and triage, pre-populate information up front and allocate matters to the lawyers with the right expertise and availability – without clients even asking.”

See exactly how Woolworths transformed their legal service delivery - watch the full webinar.

The Future

Looking ahead, Woolworths plans to deepen its investment in Checkbox and continue expanding automation across legal and adjacent functions. The success of the Data Incident Application has set a strong precedent for building tools that embed compliance and risk management into everyday business processes.

Checkbox has also created a culture shift inside the legal team. Many lawyers and paralegals — who started with no app development experience — have now trained in Checkbox and are building their own workflows. This has unlocked new skillsets and empowered the team to think beyond “how we’ve always done it.”

“Checkbox has allowed some of the team to develop a whole new skillset, having started using the platform with absolutely no app-building experience and having since built out many different types of apps from start to finish,” said Langford.
“Checkbox has also enabled the broader team to think differently about how we do things and ensure that rather than replicating an ‘as-is’ process, we look at how the process can be streamlined and then automated to save time for everyone.”

Evan Wong, Co-Founder and CEO at Checkbox, said “Woolworths Group is creating a forward-thinking version of legal that is scalable, a better user experience for business clients, and frees lawyers and paralegals to focus on high quality and strategic work. The company’s legal team now has the bandwidth to make a greater impact on Woolworths Group’s vast range of stakeholders by designing new digital tools to deliver advice when it is needed and in a familiar context.”

“The capability puts autonomy back in the hands of the business, and has reduced the volume of matters that the legal team needs to handle by 50-80%. When you really analyse the legal thought process, there are many repeatable tasks which can be automated – the 80% – but then there is the 20% which is infinitely complex; this is where our legal efforts are best spent. Checkbox gives us the framework to let the legal team spend its time on motivating work and high-value matters.”