Why Legal Practices Still Struggle With Workflow Bottlenecks (Even When They Think They’re ‘Digitized’)

8 min read

Here’s what you should know about workflow bottlenecks – even in tech-forward practices.

There’s a common belief among forward-thinking law firms and in-house legal departments that “we’re digitized, therefore we’re efficient”. But while digitization can and does help with efficiency, most organizations tend to adopt tools rather than workflows. Don’t get us wrong – tools are great. But digitization doesn’t equal transformation. Even if your firm has adopted e-signing tools, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve reduced bottlenecks in your workflows.

Instead, workflow bottlenecks are a symptom of a much larger problem; broken or outdated processes. There’s no shortage of bottlenecks that can strangle your productivity, even if you’re using digital tools. Here are just some of the major workflow bottlenecks you’re likely to encounter, even if your legal practice is fully digitized.

The Difference Between Digitized and Digital

Digitization is very different from operating a digital-first legal practice. Being digitized means your practice is tech-enabled; you’re using digital technologies like PDFs, e-signatures, cloud storage, and practice management apps.

But being digital-first means you use digital operations. Your workflows are designed around automation, data flow, and interoperability. This is the difference between using technology as a bolt-on extra to your old, outdated processes, and redesigning your processes around your tech stack.

Hidden Bottlenecks That Persist After Digitization

There are several different bottlenecks that can survive a digital transformation, rendering your firm less productive than it could be:

• Siloed systems and tools that don’t talk to each other
• Human gatekeepers
• Inconsistent intake and documentation
• Manual approval loops
• Low-quality or bad data

The first bottleneck is siloed systems and tools that don’t talk to each other. If your tech stack isn’t fully integrated with APIs and workflows that copy data from one platform to another, then your staff are likely wasting precious time manually copy-pasting information between platforms. This siloed nature of data management can result in duplicate information, outdated records, and – most importantly – errors.

The better alternative? A single source of truth for your practice. Having all of your critical information and documents in one platform makes it easy for your staff to have the most up-to-date info at their fingertips.

Another bottleneck that persists after digitization is human gatekeepers. If there are critical steps in your workflow that rely on one person’s knowledge or availability, then you aren’t fully automated. Your workflow pauses when that person is out of the office, busy with other tasks, or otherwise unavailable.

To get around this bottleneck, you’ll want to make sure your processes are thoroughly documented. Having documentation around your internal processes means any employee can step in and tackle that core task when it needs to be done, instead of having to wait for your critical point-person to return.

The third bottleneck that legal practices face is inconsistent intake and documentation. Intake forms can often vary by lawyer or by department, and if your legal practice is a particularly large one, this can cause problems like inconsistent data, document templates living in multiple places, rework, and errors. The fix here is relatively easy: Implement one consistent intake form.

Another major bottleneck, even in digitized practices? Manual approval loops. If your partners or senior managers are still reviewing PDFs manually, that’s dragging down your practice’s productivity. Even worse, if you have unclear triggers or routing rules for signature and review cycles, your signature cycles will be much slower.

To resolve this bottleneck, you’ll want to implement document automation and review software that automatically flags errors, duplicates, and incomplete information, and then enables you to send out whole packages for signature with a single click. Appara’s automation software is based on templated precedents, so you can be confident in the language that comes out, thereby reducing review time.

The final bottleneck that digitized legal practices face is bad data. Low-quality data, or data that was poorly collected, can affect the tools you use (e.g., give wrong answers), have you optimizing your workflows for the wrong things, or have you looking at the wrong workflows to implement fixes. This means wasted time or increased risk, which results in wasted money.

To solve this bottleneck, you’ll want to ensure your data is sound and that you’re properly tracking your metrics. Start from a sound foundation by implementing proper checks and balances in your data entry workflows. For performance management, use a digital tracking system like Litify or ActionStep. These solutions enable you to clearly see your productivity data, so you can identify where workflows are going wrong or where work is blocked.

(Fun fact: When Cherkowski Marsden LLP implemented Appara’s Corporate, Estates, and Real Estate solutions, they were able to automate client intake, document generation, workflows, and even signatures! Discover how this firm increased their productivity and improved communication by reading this case study.)

Why These Bottlenecks Stay Hidden

These bottlenecks can stay hidden from view for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, legal professionals often mistake activity for efficiency. “We’re always busy” often gets conflated with “we’re being productive” when, in point of fact, your team is focused on busywork. High billable hours can mask workflow inefficiencies that are slowing your team down. The billable hour can actually disincentivize wanting to solve productivity issues; that’s why professional services firms should be looking at alternative pricing arrangements.

Bottlenecks can also hide behind a lack of central visibility into your processes. If you can’t see the workflow, then you can’t fix it. That’s why tech-forward legal practices are adopting reporting dashboards.

Finally, these bottlenecks can hide behind legacy mindsets. The attitude of “this is how we’ve always done it” can obscure the fact that your existing processes just aren’t working. Even worse, if you’re adding technology with no regard for your underlying processes, then you’re painting over the actual problem with fancy tools that won’t solve anything.

These hidden bottlenecks can have a variety of operational costs, including slower turnaround times, increased risk of errors and compliance issues, staff burnout due to repetitive admin works, and reduced profitability due to avoidable non-billable labour.

What True Digital Transformation Looks Like

Digital transformation is more than just adding tools. According to The Impact Lawyers, it’s also about “changing the organization, the business model, and the way services are provided”.

When your law practice truly embraces digital transformation, it looks like:

• Centralized workflows
• Automated document assembly
• Task routing & conditional logic 
• Data that flows across systems

With centralized workflows, your entire team will have one source of truth for tasks, documents, and approvals. No more having to navigate multiple platforms just to see which tasks are due and when. No more struggling with documents being saved in multiple systems. No more email chains of approvals that aren’t documented anywhere else. Instead, you have one streamlined place where all of your data lives.

With automated document assembly, you can use templates that are tied to data that already exists in your system instead of having to manually input everything. Meanwhile, task routing and conditional logic can move your workflows automatically to the next step without human intervention.

But perhaps most importantly, having your data move across systems will enable you to maintain full visibility over your entire practice. You can leverage technology to connect different softwares to each other, eliminating re-entry and version issues.

How Legaltech Platforms Create Digital Transformation

Emerging legaltech solutions like Appara support digital transformation in a variety of ways. First and foremost, they use purpose-built workflows designed around actual legal processes to get things done faster. Secondly, they leverage a structured data model that eliminates duplicate entries and automatically verifies the data in your system. Third, they automate drafting, routing, and approvals, so your documents are always moving along. Fourth, they offer real-time visibility into every stage of a file, so you always know where your legal matters are in the pipeline. And finally, they reduce your firm’s reliance on undocumented knowledge that only one person has access to.

Key Takeaways

1. Digitization alone isn’t enough for those organizations that want to stay competitive. There’s a difference between having digital tools and using digital tools to operate in a digital-first manner. 
2. Instead of just evaluating software, your legal practice should be evaluating its workflows to examine how and where legal technology can reduce errors, accelerate work, prevent re-work, and otherwise move things along. 
3. Future-ready organizations know how to build processes that scale, and technology is a major part of ensuring your workflows don’t bottleneck.

Is your firm ready for a full-scale digital transformation? Appara can help. Book a demo to unlock your FREE trial of Appara and discover how entity management, workflow automation, and document automation software can make your firm more profitable – even if you’re already digitized.