Legal industry has been consistently evolving with the changing times. What once generated a revenue of 256.66 billion US dollars in 2013, rose to a whopping 288 billion dollar industry in 2018. Not only that, according to sources the global market value of the legal services is expected to cross 1 trillion US dollars by the end of 2021. That’s incredible!
However, with the advancements in technology, and the increased pressure on the law firms to provide services to the customers at lower costs and in less time, demanded significant changes in the aforementioned industry. And to satisfy all the changing needs of the global market, the legal industry slowly started to adopt some powerful technological solutions to streamline their legal services. RPA or robotic process automation is one such technology that the legal industry is leveraging for quite some time now.
RPA, a robust tool of artificial intelligence, is a perfect solution for the legal industry. Through its smart functionalities, RPA could significantly reduce the repetitive tasks of law firms and could also seamlessly manage the fact-based decisions that required no human intervention, or knowledge. RPA frees-up the advisors to let them spend more time with the client, while making the law firm more efficient and successful.
How Law Firms Can Get Started With Robotic Process Automation?
When the law firms integrate and deploy RPA-based legal software solutions in their businesses, they experience higher efficiency and productivity. RPA offers the legal industry with more desirable results in less time and certainly with less efforts. Moreover, the two fundamental aspects of the law firms, i.e. the cost of operations and the administrative processes also gets improved significantly using AI-driven bots.
Additionally, since there are no major changes required while introducing RPA in the legal sector, the law firms can expect high returns in substantially low time.
However, there are two main aspects that may influence the growth of RPA in the legal industry.
1. Costs Involved
Costs is one of the crucial issues that law firms may face during the digitization process. The cost may be the development cost, the deployment cost, or various other operational costs. So, the best way to ensure cost savings is to develop your custom RPA-based legal software solution. That way, you do not have to pay every month to your service provider and thanks to scalable solutions of RPA, you only need to spend what you are using.
2. Selection of the Service Provider
Keeping up with compliance and regulation is essential for law firms to protect themselves against any sanctions or fines. Software robots, a part of automation technology similar to RPA in retail, could help law firms stay in compliance with rules and regulations. With this technology, law firms could seamlessly receive reports on checks and efficiently track any suspicious activity. Additionally, while managing vital data, the software robots automatically populate the required fields in transaction records
Use Cases Of RPA In Legal Sector
So far we discussed how RPA could enhance the legal services, and what are the major challenges that need to be solved. Let us now learn a few use cases of RPA in the legal sector.
1. Assessing the Financial Risk
According to McKinsey’s global reports, automation techniques, including RPA in financial services, could solve almost 56% of the financial analysis and 20% of the risk management problems. The modern-day robotics automation technology could seamlessly monitor and mitigate the risks without any human assistance. The robots could efficiently organize the vital data related to clients, companies, and even accounting databases, into a more systematic way. Moreover, the automation technology also helps the law firms to sync the cases with the calendars. That is really helpful in determining the feasibility of the case, i.e., whether it can be put on fast-track, intermediate track, etc.
2. Ensuring Legal Compliance
Keeping up in compliance and regulation is essential for the law firms to protect themselves against any sanctions or fines. Software robots could possibly help them to stay in compliance with the rules and regulations. With automation technology, the law firms could seamlessly get reports on checks, and can track any suspicious activity efficiently. Moreover, while tracking the vital data of the law firm, the software robots automatically fill the required data in the transaction records.
3. Effective Communication between Fee Earner and Client
Software robots can effectively enhance the communications between the client and the legal service provider. The automation robots can seamlessly organize your critical documents and can store them at a centralized place where they can be accessed by your clients as well. Not only that, but, during case preparation, the robotic process automation can efficiently help you to locate various documents sent by the client. It can also send various forms to the client and can track client’s customizations very efficiently.
4. E-Discovery
Information management is a vital challenge for legal advisors who need to track and analyze a tremendous amount of data to construct a solid case. There are a lot of e-discovery programs available; however, the costs are relatively high, and legal agents still need to manually filter what is relevant. Even with software assistance, the process is time-consuming and resource-intensive. RPA in healthcare demonstrates how robotic process automation’s capabilities in flexible information management can streamline the process, offering potential applications in the legal sector as well.
5. Reducing Fee Overruns
The time it takes to close a case and the measure of assets utilized inside the court are factors that any person can’t predict. Fee overruns and extra expenses not only hamper the relationship with the customer but also give rise to disputes and satellite cases. However, RPA in manufacturing can be a critical tool in solving the client’s case much faster. It is an easy-to-deploy tool that can reduce the burden during peak critical times and can seamlessly accelerate the case-solving procedure.
Also Read- Choosing the Right Robotic Process Automation Software for Your Business
What Does the Future Hold For the Legal Sector?
According to Deloitte, by 2025, the need to offer customers more incentive for cash will drive a significant change in the lawful segment. Experts must stay aware of the quick pace of progress and quickly adjust to the necessities of their customers. Embracing a ‘robotization first’ outlook, with robust RPA services, regardless of whether in-house or external counsel, will undoubtedly transform the legal sector. Addressing its business challenges with a hybrid human/software workforce—utilizing software robots through RPA services to automate daily procedures and freeing people for more innovative, strategic tasks—is bound to have a substantial impact. Adopting a “automation-first” strategy, with clear pathways for organizations to embrace this powerful shift, will ultimately lead to success in the legal field, transforming it indefinitely.
Let’s Build Powerful Legal Software Solutions!
In this article we saw how automation technology is driving success for the legal industry. Hence, it can be said that technology in some form or the other is surely transforming every aspect of the global market and is building success for the businesses. We, at Matellio, can help you build powerful and cost-effective legal software solutions to overcome your competitors and scale your business to great heights. Our certified developers, and experienced QA Engineers ensures that your business runs smoothly and in an efficient manner. Hence, if you have any queries, or ideas regarding legal software development, feel free to contact us!