How to Run a Legaltech Pilot Without Disrupting Active Matters

6 min read

Here’s how your law firm, notary office, or in-house legal department can pilot legal technology without it getting in the way of your actual work.

Most legal professionals understand the need to modernize their workflows with emerging legaltech. Outdated workflows, siloed information, and manual document creation are some of the most substantial productivity challenges that legal professionals face, both in-house and at law firms and notary offices.

That’s why productivity solutions like, document automation software, legal operations technology, and workflow automation apps are becoming all the more common.

But the biggest concern isn’t the legaltech itself, it’s the possibility of disrupting active files, missing deadlines, or creating client service issues while you pilot a legaltech solution.

As a result, many firms delay legaltech adoption – or never move beyond product demonstrations – out of a fear that they’ll accidentally end up disrupting an active matter during a legaltech pilot. This fear is justified, according to a recent MIT report, up to 95% of legaltech pilots fail.

But the most successful legaltech pilots are designed to protect active matters while generating meaningful insights about whether a solution is worth broader implementation. Here’s how you can pilot your new legaltech solution without disrupting active client matters.

Isolate a Single, Standardized Workflow to Limit Friction

Overly ambitious legaltech pilots collapse when organizations attempt to overhaul multiple areas simultaneously. This broad approach creates operational drag before the software can prove its baseline value.

Protect your current work by isolating a single administrative process for your initial trial. Focus exclusively on high-volume, highly repetitive workflows that carry minimal external risk.

For example, you could target these specific, low-risk entry points during your pilot:

• Intake Management: Automate initial client intake data collection to minimize manual transcription.
• Routine Document Generation: Offload repetitive template assembly to a secure platform.
• Client Onboarding: Streamline compliance paperwork, like KYC,  without altering active matter files.

According to AI program Harvey, legal operators can get the most leverage from legaltech and AI pilots by automating contract lifecycle management, legal intake, document review, regulatory compliance monitoring, and legal research & drafting.

A pilot should answer one question well, not transform everything overnight.

Keep Active Matters Out of the Pilot

When testing new legaltech, it can be tempting to try to see how much faster you can get your active matters done. But experimenting with active matters during a legaltech pilot is a significant risk and a recipe for failure. 

Instead, create a safe testing environment for your legaltech solution:

• Use historical files instead of active ones to test your legaltech on
• Create sample matters to feed into your legaltech
• Test your firm’s internal administrative workflows instead of actual client work

By creating a safe testing environment, you’ll be able to eliminate the risk to client matters, enable your teams to experiment with legaltech freely, and create confidence in your new software before it’s deployed on real-world matters.

You can also run parallel comparisons between existing workflows and the new system. This will enable you to measure just how much time you’re saving, how much more accurate your team is, and how much more consistent your files are compared to before you implemented the new legaltech. Though, make sure to take into account a learning curve.

Define Success Before You Pilot

One common mistake that law firms, notary offices, and in-house legal departments make when piloting new software is that they evaluate legal technology on general impressions instead of actual hard criteria.

Make sure you ask smart questions about your legaltech pilot. These questions include:

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• How will we know if the pilot worked?
• What metrics matter the most?

From these questions you can establish measurable objectives such as:

• Time saved per matter
• Drafting time
• Number of administrative touchpoints
• Document consistency
• Turnaround time
• Number and severity of errors

Without clear success criteria, every pilot becomes a subjective debate. By deciding on criteria for success in advance, you’ll be able to clearly tell whether or not your legaltech pilot was successful.

(For instance, Jerome Tsang, Notary was able to cut time-per-file by 50% with Appara Real Estate. Because this notary corporation was tracking their time before they implemented Appara, they were able to concretely identify just how much time their new legaltech saved them.)

Involve the People Who Actually Do the Work

Implementation efforts often stall when decisions are made by leadership without insights from the front-line workers who would actually be using the legaltech in question. 

Include frontline workers in your legaltech pilot and decision-making process. This includes paralegals, conveyancers, legal assistants, administrative staff, notaries, and lawyers who are directly involved in matter workflows.

The benefits of involving these parties include:

• Better feedback
• Faster identification of workflow gaps
• Greater buy-in during rollout

For example, a pilot of a document automation platform like Appara may reveal issues in your processes or workflows that only drafting staff would notice. The people closest to the process are usually best positioned to evaluate whether or not a tool delivers value.

Run the Pilot Like a Project, Not an Experiment

Law firms, notary offices, and in-house legal departments are often tempted to run legaltech pilots like experiments. “What happens if we implement X piece of software?”

But in order to see success during implementation, it’s key that you run your legaltech pilot like a legal project.

This means establishing a clear structure for the project. Here’s what that looks like:

• Designate a project owner
• Set timelines
• Schedule check-ins
• Define evaluation milestones

You’ll also want to create a pilot plan. This will include details like the scope, participants, timeline, success metrics, and review process.

Finally, it’s important to avoid pilot purgatory. Legaltech pilots often continue indefinitely without a decision. To avoid this, you’ll want to set a predetermined date for evaluation and next steps.

A pilot should always lead to a decision: Adopt, refine, or move on.

Key Takeaways:

1. Legaltech pilots don’t have to be disruptive
2. Reduce risk by starting small, defining success clearly, and keeping early testing separate from active client work
3. The goal isn’t to prove that technology is perfect; the goal is to determine whether it meaningfully improves how legal work gets done
4. Organizations that pilot thoughtfully are the ones that realize value the fastest while maintaining high levels of client service

Are you looking to evaluate legal workflow technology without disrupting active matters? We can help you identify a single administrative process where small improvements create measurable gains. Contact Appara today to book a demo and unlock your FREE trial.