Technology Solutions for Automating Repetitive Tasks in Corporate Legal Departments

Corporate legal teams don’t plan on spending their days fielding repetitive requests, approving routine contracts, or managing admin work that doesn’t really require a lawyer. But that’s where a lot of time goes.

These tasks are often low-risk, high-volume, and tedious. And while important, they don’t make the best use of legal’s time or expertise.

When in-house lawyers are stuck context switching between this type of work, it slows the entire legal department down and increases the risk of mistakes and burnout. Most importantly, it pulls legal away from the strategic work they’re meant to focus on.

The good news is that these repetitive, routine tasks are some of the easiest to automate. With the right legal technology, teams can handle their workloads more efficiently, reduce manual errors, and respond faster to the business.

Here are some of the top technology solutions for automating repetitive tasks in corporate legal departments.

1. Legal Intake and Workflow Automation Software

One of the biggest sources of repetitive work for corporate legal departments is handling incoming requests. These often come through email, Slack, or in passing, and usually don’t include all the information legal needs. So someone on the legal team has to chase down requesters for context, assign work manually, and keep track of how that matter is progressing. It’s a lot of admin work that slows things down and doesn’t require a lawyer’s expertise.

Legal intake and workflow automation software like Checkbox helps eliminate that manual effort by giving legal teams a centralized way to manage requests and automate routine steps in the process.

For example, to submit a legal request, business users can fill out self-service forms with required fields for all key details of the matter (i.e. what kind of support they need, the relevant contract details, or the urgency of the matter).

Once submitted, Checkbox automatically routes the request based on predefined logic. So if it’s an NDA, it can go straight to self-service given it meets certain criteria. If it’s a complex vendor agreement, it can be automatically assigned to the right legal team member based on workload, matter type, or region.

With Checkbox’s no-code workflow builder, legal teams can also build and refine automations independently for common tasks like NDA and document generation, contract reviews, or policy approvals.

2. Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Tools

One of the most repetitive and time-consuming areas for legal teams is contract work. Legal is often pulled into drafting and reviewing standard agreements that follow the same format every time. These tasks slow down the business, increase legal’s workload, and rarely require deep legal expertise.

CLM tools like Ironclad, or those built into comprehensive platforms like Checkbox, help reduce this manual effort by automating the end-to-end contract process from intake and drafting, to approval and execution.

For example, legal teams can set up pre-approved contract templates with built-in rules and fallback clauses. Business users can then generate their own contracts by answering a few simple questions.

Based on those inputs, the system automatically fills in the correct terms and routes the contract to the right stakeholder for approval. If legal review is needed, it gets flagged and assigned. If not, the contract can move straight to signature.

3. eBilling and Spend Management Tools

Reviewing invoices and managing outside counsel spend is another repetitive task that eats up time for in-house legal teams. Manually checking billing guidelines, tracking budgets in spreadsheets, and chasing law firms for adjustments is not only tedious, but also increases the risk of errors and overspending.

eBilling and spend management platforms like Brightflag help legal teams automate this process and gain better control over their external legal spend.

For example, legal teams can set up automated billing rules that flag or reject invoice entries that don’t comply with billing guidelines. If an external counsel tries to bill for a blocked task or exceed a budget cap, the system can catch it before it gets approved. 

4. eDiscovery Platforms

Litigation, investigations, and compliance audits often require legal teams to collect, review, and organize massive amounts of data. Doing this manually across multiple sources like email, chat, and cloud storage, is time-consuming and error-prone. It also slows down response times and adds pressure to already thinly stretched legal teams.

eDiscovery platforms help automate much of this work by streamlining how data is collected, processed, and reviewed.

For example, legal teams can connect these platforms to data sources like Gmail, Slack, or Microsoft 365 and automatically pull in relevant documents based on predefined search terms, custodians, or date ranges.

Once imported, the platform uses AI to group similar documents, tag duplicates, and prioritize what needs human review. Teams can also set up workflows to flag sensitive content or escalate specific document types for deeper analysis.

5. AI Legal Chatbots

Legal teams often get pulled into answering the same questions over and over. Whether it’s “Can I sign this NDA?” or “Where can I find our standard contract language?”, these low-risk, repetitive queries take up valuable time and interrupt higher-priority work.

Legal AI chatbots and self-service portals like Checkbox help automate these interactions by giving business users instant access to answers, documents, and approvals, without legal needing to get involved every time.

For example, Checkbox’s AI legal chatbot is available directly within business messaging tools (i.e. Slack and Microsoft Teams) and can guide a sales rep through generating a compliant NDA, step by step.

It can also answer basic questions about company policies and legal processes by pulling from a pre-approved knowledge base. If an issue is too complex or falls outside of standard workflows, the tool can escalate it to a lawyer automatically.

These solutions are often easy to build and update, allowing legal teams to create guided workflows and knowledge libraries without relying on IT.

Key Takeaways

Repetitive legal tasks may seem small on their own, but together, they take a serious toll on time, team morale, and the ability for legal to focus on strategic priorities. 

However, legal technology solutions like legal intake and workflow automation tools, CLM platforms, eBilling systems, eDiscovery platforms, and AI legal chatbots are designed to automate these repetitive tasks for corporate legal departments.

They make work faster, reduce risk, improve accuracy, and give legal teams the breathing room to focus on the work that actually moves the business forward.

Want to learn more? Book a call with one of our technology consultants to see how investing in automation can help your legal team operate more efficiently, scale without burning out, and ultimately deliver more value across the business.