(Control) F That: Why Legaltech Makes Control-F and Manual Errors Obsolete

5 min read

Here’s why modern legal technology has made manual document processes a thing of the past.

Traditional means of searching through documents to find clauses or identifying errors are unreliable and slow. While in days past, using control-F was the only way to search for certain clauses, this manual search method is tedious. Imagine a junior associate scrolling through a 300-page contract hitting control-F to find references to termination clauses – only to discover that there are also references to “cancellation”. Control-F isn’t an effective solution for document searches, and manual data entry is prone to errors. Here’s why manual search is problematic – and how modern legal technology is making manual search a thing of the past.

Why Manual Search Fails in Legal Work

Manual search poses a variety of problems for lawyers, paraprofessionals, and notaries. First and foremost, manual search methods like Control-F can miss variations of terms that aren’t entirely consistent with the original search term. Legal terms often vary slightly, with one single document referencing both “termination” and “cancellation”, for instance. A search for one of those keywords will miss the other, and vice versa. Plus, if there are spelling mistakes, a manual search will miss the misspelled version of the keyword.

While one may argue that manual document review can still catch these variations because a human is at the helm, in reality, it’s more complicated than that. Legal professionals are busy and often overloaded with work, which means when mental fatigue sets in, they can miss certain clauses – thereby increasing risk. When it comes to document review, human error can result in non-compliance or client liability, which means the stakes of not having accurate search and review processes are high.

How Legaltech Solves the Search Problem

The world of legal technology offers a variety of powerful tools designed to resolve the issues posed by manual search. For instance, artificial intelligence tools have enabled search products to go beyond keywords, and instead look for context – thereby finding clauses based on meaning.

Legaltech platforms can also export data from your documents in a structured way, creating navigable data points that you can use in your legal work. Plus, you can use legaltech solutions to maintain consistency across document versions, with automatic change tracking and redlines keeping track of differences across versions without needing to rely on human vigilance.

There are several real-world legal tasks you can automate through intelligent document structuring and search functionalities. With advanced document review software, you can find all indemnity clauses across hundreds of contracts in just seconds, automatically identify outdated client addresses across documents, or even pull in documents that have conflicting provisions. As a result, the document review that used to take hours can now take minutes.

Reduced Errors Makes for Better Practice Management

Emerging legaltech solutions are also helping to reduce errors. Advanced legaltech solutions like Appara can automatically flag missing or inconsistent information in your documents, so you can correct errors instantly instead of having to find out about them after the documents have already been circulated for review. As a result, your firm is exposed to less risk due to errors, which improves your compliance and helps clients have more confidence in your firm.

Reducing the number of errors in documents also cuts down on administrative time expenses, which means your team can spend more time on high-value legal work, bringing in more revenue for your firm while having happier clients. Plus, with an intelligent entity management and document automation system, everything in your system is traceable and version-controlled, leading to better audit trails.

Choosing the Right Legaltech Vendor

There are several legaltech options on the market for firms of all sizes that can help to eliminate manual searches and cut down on mistakes. To choose the right vendor, you’ll want to determine what sorts of documents you want to review, as some vendors specialize in certain types. If you need a more generalized solution, then a document review tech vendor specializing in, say, family law may not be right for you.

You’ll also want to ensure that the vendor in question uses robust data protection practices to keep your and your clients’ data safe. (Here at Appara, for instance, we’re ISO-certified, and infosec is baked into everything we do.)

Finally, it’s important to choose a vendor that can help you automate your document production and workflows. Document review is just one part of the legal document management process; document production and completing transactions are also significant time-sucks for legal professionals. The right vendor will be able to help you automate all three processes, cutting down your production time by as much as 75%.

Manual search is a relic of a bygone era. Modern legaltech solutions have introduced intelligent search capabilities that can conduct contextual searches for multiple keywords based on meaning rather than the actual text string provided. Plus, emerging document automation legaltech automatically flags errors for manual review, making sure no mistakes make it into the final document. Document automation solutions like Appara also leverage a single source of truth for filling in variable information, so you can make changes throughout all of your documents in a single spot – which reduces the likelihood of manual data entry errors. With these legaltech tools, your firm can cut its costs and save time by reducing errors.

Are you ready to discover how smart legaltech can help your firm reduce costs and cut down on errors? Contact Appara today to book a demo and unlock your FREE trial.