Introduction 

A lesser-known, yet absolutely vital, role in most considerably-sized small, medium and large law firms is that of the legal administrator. While this job title can and is assigned to a specific, yet wide-ranging function, a legal administrator can be considered far more nebulous than the already broad demarcation of ‘performing administrative duties’, answering phones, greeting potential and actual clients, dealing with schedules, finances and office logistics. Indeed, many of these duties can be confined to the particular domain of a given profession, such as those of secretary, accountant or HR specialist. 

While these administrative functions are not as synonymous with legal practice as lawyers are, they are often no less challenging and fraught with easy-to-make, yet costly, mistakes. Indeed, some areas of legal practice that fall under the extensive umbrella of administration are technically innate in a legal professional’s job description, such as that of fact-checking and proofreading. Consequently, administration is no small part of a law firm’s greater functionality. 

Yet, law firm administration is often fraught with errors, with some analyses suggesting that out of every 100 tasks undertaken 10-30 contain an error. These faults are typically the result of standard human error, and are accordingly reduced by automation.

What is Automation? 

Automation is the process of minimising human input to a given process, by developing machinery or applications that can substitute a typically human-undertaken action.

In the context of law firm administration, automation involves concepts and applications such as paperless office document management software or legal accounting software that replace and reduce the level of human interaction otherwise required to complete these duties.

How Automation Reduces Administrative Errors

So how can legal practice software reduce administrative error rates? At a glance, the answer to this question can be anthropologically answered by the concept of task-specific intelligent design. It is relatively uncontroversial to conclude that humans were not created or evolved to carry out modern repetitious tasks with great accuracy and speed. Machines and legal software solutions, by contrast, were invented for this purpose, and as such they can perform a task flawlessly, without the biological limitations of finite concentration, boredom and miscalculation.

While this generalistic explanation of how legal technology solutions provide a less-erroneous administrative process is technically sufficient, it is informative to consider salient, though non-exhaustive, instances of legal tech serving to lessen administrative oversight. 

To this end, it is worth recognising that there are types of error reduction – innate and exterior. Innate error reduction involves embedded functions in the very administrative process that prevent errors. Exterior error reduction, by contrast, involves overarching analytical functions that reduce pattern errors in administrative work that is already completed.

Examples of Innate Error Reduction

One example of innate error reduction is that produced as a side-effect of the general efficiency of legal practice management software. A survey has shown that 40% of employees waste at least an hour-plus each day on administrative tasks that could and arguably should be eliminated from their schedule. These include organising filing systems, both physical and digital, scheduling meetings and sending email queries, among other duties. Given the increasingly burdensome workloads lawyers are facing today, every second saved is crucial. 

For example, by reducing the time taken to perform certain tasks, such as Know Your Customer or KYC checks, legal practice CRM (customer relationship management) applications can serve to give lawyers more time for other tasks. More time afforded, enabled by legal office management software driven automation, allows for greater time spent editing or correcting elements of otherwise completed assignments, whether technical, such as wording, or conceptual/factual, such as slight legal errors or mistakes as to the facts of the issue. These small, yet vital in aggregate, administrative mistakes can be dramatically reduced in accordance with the amount of time dedicated to them, as users can spend less time completing the base task, and more time reducing any administrative errors extant within the finished document. 

An example of such an effect from a legal tech application is the time saved through autofill features in smart documentation systems. The speed differential in terms of words per minute speed, between physical ‘pen and paper’ writing and keyboard typing is considerable, even before the use of autofill in the filling out of a document. However, when combined with smart autofill applications, such as that seen in the GLS system, which automatically connect client details and in-legal practice documents, the speed at which documents can be completed, and therefore the time available for further administrative checking, is exponentially increased.

In addition to error reduction derived through time-saving measures, other aspects of legal technology also serve to innately reduce mistakes, such as legal cloud software, which enables an entire file or a file version recovery in the event of a hardware malfunction or a human error, such as an employee accidentally deleting a needed file.

Beyond merely providing reactive countermeasures for potentially flawed administrative practice, legal tech software can proactively prevent mistakes from occurring. For example, even tried-and-tested existing features, such as reminders, when incorporated into a greater overarching legal matter management software, can ensure that no appointments or deadlines are forgotten and that any warning of such a potential mistake not only reaches the required staff member in their work environment, but also reaches other relevant individuals should they be indisposed. Such appointments, if involving interactions with clients, can be further proactively protected from flaws by CRM systems that ensure that information essential to client interactions is not forgotten or mismanaged.

Examples of Exterior Error Reduction

Legal technology systems, such as GLS, often also contain cutting edge legal practice analytics. This means that, at the same time as a law firm‘s administrative work is innately protected, it is also externally monitored for any negative trends. This, crucially, allows for long-term adjustment and can enable a firm’s management team to develop their administrative process to a point of near-infallibility that would be simply unachievable without legal tech support.

Bibliography:

[1] Peter Daisyme ‘To Err is to Be Human: 5 Ways Technology Can Save the Day’ https://due.com/blog/to-err-is-to-be-human-5-ways-technology-can-save-the-day/

[2] ‘Reducing Errors Through Technology to Boost Satisfaction’ at https://customerthink.com/reducing-errors-through-technology-to-boost-satisfaction/

[3] ‘Advantages of Machines Over Human Beings’, https://www.ipl.org/essay/Essay-On-Advantages-Of-Machines-Over-Humans-PK4HYC9NPJE8R#:~:text=Machines%20have%20many%20different%20types,of%20rest%20like%20human%20beings.

[4] ‘Why do Humans make inadvertent mistakes and how can we stop them?’, at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-humans-make-inadvertent-mistakes-how-can-we-stop-john-wellwood#:~:text=As%20such%20we%20are%20fallible,to%20slips%2C%20lapses%20and%20mistakes.

[5] David Mitchell, ‘The Art of Administration’

[6] ‘Technology, Organisation and Administration’ at https://www.jstor.org/stable/2391002 

[7] ‘What is the importance of Office Administation in an Organisation’ https://certifind.com/blog/en/importance-office-administration-organization/

[8] ‘How to Improve Admin Efficiency Through Tech in Your Startup’, https://www.inc.com/veer-gidwaney/how-to-improve-admin-efficiency-through-tech-in-your-startup.html

[9] ‘Effective Role of Administration In An Organisation’, at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140714095925-34031211-effective-role-of-administration-in-an-organization

[10] ‘Importance of Administration’ at http://www.xprttraining.com/experts_training_ingles/importance_administration.html