Automation Revolution: How Law Firms Can Use AI Tools to Drive Profits

In this recent article from Legal Management, the magazine of the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), QorusDocs CEO and co-founder Ray Meiring explores how the legal industry is leveraging AI and automation tools to reduce operational costs, improve productivity and collaboration, and help secure new business.

The legal industry is seeing a shift in tech adoption as artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platforms such as ChatGPT continue to show numerous benefits for streamlining operations and automating processes. 

For many, leveraging AI and automated technologies can help increase business opportunities, reduce operational costs and foster essential cross-team collaboration to conserve manual hours. In fact, AI and automation can reduce up to 23% of a lawyer’s everyday tasks, showing just how impactful these advanced digital tools can be.

However, the legal industry isn’t known for being an early adopter of new technology. In 2022, just 41% of small law firms adopted new technologies. In addition, only 29% of legal departments expressed interest in adopting robust workflow automation tools, showing how many legal professionals prefer to use software they’re already familiar with.

Why the resistance? According to new research, almost half of law departments and firms cited a lack of technology knowledge as the leading reason for resisting broader technology adoption. However, the industry is starting to see a change. Recent research now predicts that AI legal tools will become mainstream in the next five years as automation and AI tools can save firms time, reduce costs and help them remain competitive in a challenging market. 

Leveraging AI to secure new business

AI-powered tools enable lawyers and legal staff to quickly analyze large data volumes, streamline time-consuming tasks and save time. For example, AI-powered proposal software helps create more efficient pitch response workflows to win new business. AI and natural language programming are both accelerating the pitch process for firms and creating competitive, tailored responses that lead to new business.

When creating pitches, firms must use the most engaging and informative content to convince prospects to choose their services. During this process, AI and machine learning technology perform the legwork by recommending the best information for a specific pitch that will resonate most with prospects, leading to more new business wins.

Similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, proposal software uses AI to craft accurate first drafts with the most relevant, business-winning information at the click of a button. This tool significantly simplifies the pitch process, enabling teams to spend less time developing pitches and more time on other important tasks.

“Automation and AI tools can save firms time, reduce costs and help them remain competitive in a challenging market, enabling them to accelerate workflows and balance staff workloads.” 

AI-powered proposal management software is also equipped to answer common questions that regularly appear in pitches, eliminating the need to run time-consuming content searches to track down accurate responses. This helps firms save time, effort and resources while ensuring consistency in documents and messaging. Since it’s AI-driven, the system will improve over time, streamlining the process further with every proposal. This capability allows firms to complete more pitches per year and win new client business.

Finally, AI-driven proposal software offers access to real-time analytics, which show how prospects engage with pitches. This data helps pitch teams and firms tailor smarter follow-up conversations with prospective clients, leading to higher win rates.

Improve cross-team collaboration and productivity

Only 23% of lawyers work exclusively from the office, making collaboration within firms essential for keeping operations moving. AI-driven tools like proposal automation software easily integrate with existing technology and everyday applications, simplifying collaboration on important documents.

With this software, staff members can access important documents from anywhere, allowing them to locate and edit the documents in real-time. This is essential, considering many lawyers and staff members continue to work remotely post-pandemic. Easy access to vital documents and pitches supports the productivity stream and mitigates any bottlenecks that may arise with locating and sharing documents with co-workers.

Pitch teams can receive expert and stakeholder feedback in real-time, eliminating the time-consuming tasks of tracking down subject matter experts. The teams can thus ensure that pitches are accurate, complete and up to date — elements critical to all successful pitches.

Technology adoption for 2023 and beyond

AI and automation tools are becoming essential for the legal industry. In fact, according to new research, 64% of corporate legal and law firm specialists are ready to invest in legal technology adoption.

With AI and automation, law firms can increase business wins, reduce operational costs and improve productivity and collaboration. Although the industry hasn’t always been the first to adopt new technology, the mainstream success of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT is piquing the interest of many legal professionals, causing them to turn to their own digital transformation strategies and look at tools such as proposal management software to streamline operations and keep business moving forward.