November, 20209 Robotic Process Automation in lawAnother example of how LegalTech is changing the face of law isRobotic Process Automation (RPA). This practiceautomates manual, rule-based, repetitive business processes by emulating the actions of humans. RPA has been successfully deployed across a range of different use cases, savings hundreds of hours of manual effort in areas such as:· intake and triage - monitoring incoming work and allocating known work types to appropriate teams, responding to common queries or completing routine compliance checks. · conflicts and compliance checks - searching against online / offline data sources to ensure you are contracting with entities within your compliance framework· post completion - ensuring internal and external systems and official registers are updated with contract meta data (such as parties, key dates and terms) · data reconciliation ­monitoring and reconcilingdata held on internal systems against official registers such as companies house and land registry Harnessing the power of LegalTech How is this revolution being perceived in the legal industry? Konexo, developed by Eversheds Sutherland to provide alternative legal and compliance services, undertook a survey of 100 in-house legal professionals in late 2019. Almost all (96%) of in-house teams felt that LegalTech would improve their working environment in the future. The potential benefits have been well publicized: adopting an integrated approach to technology will ultimately help to ease workload burdens facing in-house lawyers and allow them to adopt a more strategic role within their organization. Digital transformation will also enable in-house practitioners to harness Management Information (MI) and data to accuracy levels not currently enjoyed, which ultimately allows for more effective management of operational and legal risk.However, despite the acceleration of LegalTech, there is substantial caution about adopting a`commoditized' technological solutionthat replaces the human touch. Furthermore, the explosion of LegalTech has made it difficult to identify the best solution for solving the challenges teams are facing ­63% of in-house practitioners believe that, without the relevant consultative expertise, LegalTech is destined to fail. Sophisticated legal operations teams are focused on leveraging technology to deliver on strategy ­ defining a LegalTech roadmap which brings together their current capabilities and innovative new solutions to drive efficiency.So how do you cut through the noise? And make sure you don't "back the wrong horse" as part of the LegalTech revolution? The first thing is to keep an open mind and remain technology agnostic. The second is to think about business issues above anything else. The mistake that many people make is going out and looking for a technology solution, without necessarily knowing what the problem or challenge is they're trying to solve. Fundamentally, it comes back to: what are your business objectives? What are you actually trying to solve? And then building a solution around solving those challenges, not getting in the technology and asking what you can do with it. Often those types of projects fail. You should almost ignore the technology to begin with - it is only ever part of the answer. THE LEGAL INDUSTRY GENERATES A HUGE AMOUNT OF DATA ACROSS THE TYPICAL MATTER LIFECYCLE
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