Lexpert Magazine

LEXPERT MAGAZINE | MARCH 2016 59 | IN-HOUSE ADVISOR: AUTOMATION | OVERCOMING SKEPTICISM External lawyers who use document automation sometimes face general counsel skeptical about its use. Here's what some would like them to know about automation and what it can do for them: IT AVOIDS REPETITION: "Almost every legal department has something it does that involves very repetitive requests from the business. It would be helpful for them not to have to keep reinventing the wheel and giving the advice again and again. So having something standard that the business can generate themselves to alleviate the workload on the legal department is a huge benefit," says Andrea Alliston at Stikeman Elliott. LET THEM DEMONSTRATE: "I usually offer a demonstration of how it works in my practice to show what it can do and how it can help them. People might think it won't have a really positive impact on what they're doing day by day. When they see it, they become a lot more enthusiastic and realize the benefits it could have for their organization," says Jonathan Dyck at Miller omson. IT SAVES TIME: "One of the primary benefits is routinizing and commoditizing some of the straightforward documents that can take a lot of time between in-house counsel and the business. I'd think there'd be opportunities to look at some of the documents that the lawyers may spend a lot of time turning around – even if they have a model – and put some of that in the hands of the business with the right tool," says Mara Nickerson at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt. IT REQUIRES COMMITMENT: "ese tools are very effective and they can save a great deal of time once you've got it right. But if you're willing to do this, you've got to commit. Getting from here to there is still something, even in 2016, that you need to really grind down on. I'm not saying rah-rah, go for it, swallow your fear. I'm saying you have every reason to be worried about this. It isn't like falling off a log. You need to commit to developing expertise. It's a big project," says Mark Tamminga at Gowling WLG. IN HOUSE INSIGHT ren financial institutions are not far be- hind. In-house departments everywhere should be watching. GOWLING WLG ACTIVELY pitches its automation capabilities in areas like resi- dential mortgages, mortgage enforcement and insurance defence work done for finan- cial institutions. Mark Tamminga in Hamilton, Ont., the firm's leader of innovation initiatives, estimates it is something like 10 times more efficient than having actual human beings do the work. at means what once would have taken 20 billable hours may now take just two, and much of it can be done by lower-cost paralegals. "We've pushed a tremendous amount of work down to the clerks. In each of these practices that we've automated, we're able to fix-fee most of our work. "Once you're working with a fixed fee, the risk shis back to the law firm. We're not just selling hours, so who cares how much time we spend on it, now hours are a cost. We are in charge of our margin. As a cost, if I can increase my margin by auto- mating these things, why wouldn't I?" Automation also cuts to the heart of risk management, Tamminga says. "Some- thing as simple as entering in the numbers and then spelling it out in text in round brackets, who wants to type that multiple times? So you save yourself time but also enormously reduce your risk, your error potential. If a complex number appears 20 or 30 times in the document, you just want to grab it once and not enter it 20 or 30 times because, at some point, you're going to make a mistake." Today's automation is already more than auto-fill, he says, and uses logic. You enter the province and it uses applicable provin- cial requirements. It also does a lot of what used to be assistants' work. "It generates checklists, a reporting let- ter to the client that summarizes what we've done, who we've sent this to, when it expires, and as many envelopes as there are parties. "You send that all as a single Word docu- ment to a multi-function printer and it will print up legal-sized legal documents, letter- sized letters, and the appropriate envelopes all in one print run. So the major job there is to stuff the envelopes." at's a proposition that may involve just two people: e lawyer who collects the data and later signs off on the final docu- ments and the paralegal who does all the data-entry work. While Tamminga says it's still "critically important the final document be blessed by a lawyer," that doesn't necessarily in- volve reading it. Instead, he says, he reviews the checklist to make sure all the data is correctly entered. "If I've done the major legal blessing by signing off on the checklist, I have no prob- lem signing the document itself. I don't read the document through because we have a very high level of confidence in the form of the document, the critical point being is the variable information correct." Gowling WLG is so pleased with auto- mation programs it's working on a pilot program to push into new areas, including private placements. Tamminga says a few years from now he can see legal departments regularly do- ing their own data entry over the Internet. ose using Gowling WLG automated sys- tems may even be on a monthly subscrip- The software itself is relatively inexpensive depending on what you're using — it's just the time and effort of creating the templates you use that makes it such a big investment. > JONATHAN DYCK, MILLER THOMSON LLP

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