The Legal Work Experience is Broken
Nearly every industry has modernized its operations with click-to-order options, mobile payments, and instant communication with a real person in real time. But the legal work experience has failed to keep up.
Lawyers are spending too much time on operational tasks and not enough time on billable work. Managing complex documents, multiple clients, and entire teams leaves attorneys overworked and unhappy with their work-life balance.
- On average, lawyers bill 2.5 hours of their 8-hour day.
- 60% of law firms report that they don't respond to emails and 27% do not return phone calls.
- 60% of lawyers say they would consider switching firms for a better work-life balance.
Whether they're in a large firm or in-house counsel, legal workers report that communication with clients is inconsistent, document management is chaotic and time consuming, and tasks and deadlines are hard to track.
The legal work experience is broken. To find the right solutions to fix it, let's break down exactly what's wrong with the legal work experience today.
Chapter 1: 5 Reasons Why The Legal Work Experience Is Broken
Here are the top 5 reasons the legal work experience is disjointed, chaotic, and outdated:
1. The Client Experience is Inconsistent
More than 25% of consumers in the United States say they have higher customer experience expectations than they did two years ago. Their interactions with the legal market (as an external or internal client) aren't keeping up.
Fewer than 10% of consumers who call a law firm actually speak to a lawyer. It's no surprise that 11% of consumers hang up within 10 seconds if they can't speak to the person they're asking for by name. 42% of the time, it takes law firms at least three days to reply to prospective clients who have left a voicemail or a web-generated form.
Beyond the prospective client experience, inconsistency haunts the client's entire legal journey in two distinct ways:
Disjointed Document Delivery Paves The Way For Errors
Client documents are delivered in a variety of ways, electronically via email, sent through an online portal, printed and delivered in person, and posted through the mail. For some clients, document delivery is instant. The document is delivered while the client is speaking with their attorney on the phone or accessed right after a text message alert is received. For others, it's a game of waiting to see what the mail carrier brought today or the burdensome task of digging through an overflowing email inbox. With all of these possibilities, it's impossible to deliver the same client experience consistently.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Using many options for document delivery makes it easy for essential matters to fall through the cracks.
Attorneys Use Multiple Platforms To Communicate With Clients
Client communication tends to break down when too many platforms are available or the platforms don't connect to a single inbox of communication. Email, text, phone calls, and in-person meetings just scratch the surface of possibilities. Add in web chat, social media messages, and other messaging platforms, and you're left without a central location for all of the client/attorney communication.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Using too many options for client communication creates too much room for miscommunication and leaves little opportunity to find a complete record of all client communication.
2. Notes and Information Are Scattered Across Multiple Platforms
With too much to do and too little time, most attorneys and paralegals resort to using the platforms that their firm already has in place to do their work.
Legal document management becomes chaotic, but transitioning to a centralized platform feels too time-consuming to be feasible. Add in the mounting pressure to respond to document requests from clients quickly and find information that's spread across multiple platforms and this challenge takes a major toll on attorneys, paralegals, and clients.
The problem with multiple platforms for information and notes shows up in two distinct ways:
Attorneys And Paralegals Waste Time Searching For Documents
Lawyers waste up to six hours each week searching for documents. In fact, 54% of all U.S. professionals report wasting time searching for files in overwhelming online filing systems. And when 79% of consumers expect at least a weekly update from their lawyer,10 finding time to centralize document management isn't always a priority.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Using multiple platforms for document storage creates too much extra work for attorneys.
Attorneys And Paralegals Are Slow To Respond To Clients Requesting Documents
When documents are scattered physically and electronically, it's difficult for attorneys to respond to client requests for files, information, or even updates. More than 40% of the time, it takes law firms at least three days to respond to clients and only 26% of clients are contacted by their lawyers when a critical date is approaching.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Using multiple platforms for document storage makes it hard for attorneys to respond to clients quickly and efficiently.
3. Billable Hours Are Wasted on Double Work and Double Entry
When research, notes, document reviews and approvals, and all other project tasks are scattered across multiple platforms, billable hours are wasted on double work and double entry.
Too much time is spent on the tedious tasks of entering the same information into multiple systems or recreating the same contracts over and over again. Without automation, that manual entry leaves room for human error and wastes time.
The problem with double work and double entry shows up in two distinct ways:
Attorneys Spend Too Much Time On Tedious Tasks That Could Be Automated
Drafting divorce documents can take attorneys up to five hours, estate planning documents take up to six hours, and company formation documents can take as much as four hours. The tedious task of recreating the same documents over again (especially documents that could easily be templated) and then entering them into multiple platforms or moving them from one platform to another for clients to review simply takes too much time.
Up to 7 hours a day are wasted drafting legal documents
THE BOTTOM LINE: Too much time is wasted on repetitive tasks that should be automated to free up attorney time for more billable tasks.
Attorneys And Paralegals Create Opportunities For Human Error With Manual Entry
With so much double entry and manual work, the current process for legal work creates a wide variety of opportunities for human error. On average, for every five manual data entries, two of those entries contain errors.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Opportunities for human error can result in mistakes 40% of the time—wasting more time as the work is completed twice to fix the errors created the first time.
4. Deadlines and Tasks Are Easily Missed
With too much to do and no central system to track legal work from client intake to case closed, attorneys and others miss important deadlines and tasks.
Attorneys spend as much as 48% of their time on administrative tasks instead of legal billable work. These tasks include generating invoices, sending payment requests, office administration processes, and even configuring technology.
When legal work is tracked in sticky notes, wall calendars, and multiple software platforms, attorneys are prone to greater risks when it comes to performing critical activities for their firm:
Attorneys Miss Critical Deadlines and Reminders for Clients
Most legal work falls into the category of repeatable work, including the reminders and deadlines required of clients. Without a birdseye view of the entire process, it's easy for attorneys to miss those dates and fail to send important communication to clients. The burden of manually setting reminders to notify clients is placed upon each attorney - leaving room for error. Templatizing project workflows reduces the chance of errors and reduces the number of tasks each attorney is required to manage.
THE BOTTOM LINE: When attorneys don't follow a template for repeatable work, critical client reminders and deadlines are missed - and clients are unhappy.
Attorneys Miss Critical Deadlines and Increase Their Risk of Malpractice Claims
Legal malpractice claims are often tied to an attorney's overworked schedule which creates a domino effect. Attorneys miss deadlines to file documents and forget to calendar appointments. In fact, 6% of all legal malpractice claims are based on lawyers' failure to file documents on time, 7% are based on lawyers' failure to schedule appointments, and 9% are based on simple lawyer procrastination.
- 6% failure to file documents on time
- 7% failure to schedule appointments
- 9% due to procrastination
THE BOTTOM LINE: When attorneys don't centralize their tasks and project work into a single system, deadlines are missed and the risk of legal malpractice claims is high.
5. There is No Version Control for Contracts and Other Documents
Version control issues plague most professionals, with as many as 83% of information workers reporting a daily struggle with version challenges.
But for legal work, version issues can impact more than lost productivity. Wrong dates, missed words, and other revisions caught on one document and not updated on the next document can create exponential problems. The problem with no version control for contracts and other documents shows up in two distinct ways:
Attorneys Struggle To Collaborate With Clients And Other Legal Partners
When communication with clients takes place on multiple platforms and unconnected programs, documents are often sent back and forth multiple times. Each time a document is downloaded on a desktop, the name changes and the attorney has to search through multiple versions to find the correct document to resend in an email or print time is wasted.
THE BOTTOM LINE: When clients, paralegals, and attorneys don't have a single place to collaborate on documents that keeps everything updated in real time, version control can create frustration, confusion, and chaos for everyone.
Attorneys Risk Working From The Wrong Version Of A File Or Document
As documents are printed and submitted in a physical format or reviewed and versioned in one-off documents, version control grows chaotic. And those small changes (e.g. changes made minutes before submitting a document to the courthouse) can have a major impact on a case. With different versions of files floating around, digitally or on paper, attorneys and clients create extra risk and confusion.
THE BOTTOM LINE: When documents aren't housed in the same platform and versioned electronically in the same system, confusion and miscommunication run amok.
CHAPTER 2: What Legal Operations Teams Need Today
Top three things that legal operations teams need today:
Digitization
By 2025, data suggests that legal departments will increase their spend on technology by at least 3x. Additionally, 25% of spending on corporate legal applications will be allocated to non-specialist technology. By prioritizing technology that centralizes work into a single platform, integrates outside collaboration and communication channels, and assists non-specialist employees in completing administrative tasks, digitization will drive efficiency and productivity for legal work. Plus, it reduces the burden on attorneys.
Increased Security
Today, only 56% of legal teams have invested in technology that can help with compliance and risk management. Additionally, slimming down the number of platforms needed for legal work can increase security for file viewing, document management, contract signing, and even client communication.
Automation
Nearly 70% of legal teams say that automation could help reduce costs significantly and create efficiencies for their work. Many legal teams are well on their way to implementing that automation. By 2024, it's estimated that 50% of legal work related to corporate transactions will be automated and 20% of generalist lawyers will be replaced with non-lawyer staff.
CHAPTER 3: The New Landscape For Legal Work
The new landscape for legal work must align with the new digital, AI-enhanced landscape. It's time to modernize the way attorneys work at firms of any size and in-house.
Legal work in today's world must be:
- Collaborative: 69% of consumers expect a same-day response from their attorneys.
- Client-Facing: 69% of consumers between 18-44 years old prefer to hire an attorney who is active on social media.
- Consistent: 25% of consumers in the United States say they have higher customer experience expectations than they did two years ago.
Attorneys, clients, and law firms need a platform that can help them:
- Create a consistent, personalized client and user experience.
- Drive efficiency with AI-enhanced tools, version control, templatized processes, and increased security.
- Improve collaboration and communication with clients and internal partners.
CHAPTER 4: Fix Your Broken Legal Work Processes With Filevine
Increase your efficiency, productivity, and collaboration with Filevine, a cloud-based legal work platform for legal professionals.
- Create a consistent, personalized client and user experience.
- Drive efficiency with version control, templatized processes, and increased security.
- Improve collaboration and communication with clients and internal partners.
Request A Filevine Demo
Schedule a demo at Filevine.com today.