It’s easy for your legal department to get stuck in a technology rut. When you find a tool that has worked for a while, you start to get too comfortable with it and miss out on a lot of revolutionary developments in legal technology that can help you streamline your practice and manage your legal risks. Here are some signs it might be time for legal management software.
There is no separation between work and personal life:
Legal departments are used to dealing with mounds of work, especially since these days they are asked to do more with less budget. Despite the pile of work on your desk, there’s nothing in your contract that mentions you can’t have a persona life. However, if you are constantly the last person to leave the office at night and working more when you get home, it’s time to rethink your work processes. Legisway can automate workflows to reduce the amount of work that would normally be done manually.
You are still using Excel spreadsheets to manage your contracts.
We could write a book about this topic, but to summarize: spreadsheets with numerous tabs and file versions are not effective for keeping track of your contacts, because they don’t provide you with comprehensive oversight, and allow you to properly approve and control your contracts without having to use paper.
You constantly face pressure to meet deadlines, or worse, you have missed a deadline.
Failing to meet deadlines, or worse, missing a deadline can spell disaster, especially where regulatory compliance is concerned. Legisway allows you to receive alerts well ahead of time of upcoming deadlines or when it’s time to renew a contract, so you don’t have to scramble around at the last minute.
You have to be physically at your desk in the office to access your documents.
It should be just as easy to access your work when you are on-the-go or at the office. Cloud-based solutions, such as Legisway allow you to access your documents anytime, anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. All your documents are stored in a single place, so you can get rid of those filing cabinets.
It’s taken days or weeks to sign a contract.
Most likely, contact management eats up most of your time because you spend days or weeks chasing down the signer or have to pay an expensive fee to ship the documents to the signer in another country. Not only can you store your contacts in one place and see who is responsible, but you can also complete an entirely digital paperless workflow with the DocuSign integration in Legisway.
Your organization is growing rapidly.
If your organization is experiencing significant growth, there’s a good chance that the technology tools you started out with no longer meet your needs or you need technology that is scalable. It’s time to reconsider whether your existing software is aligned with your company’s trajectory. With Legisway, all you have to do is adjust your license agreement to add new user roles.
Takeaway:
Since the legal department wears many hats, they may not have the time to think strategically about technology, let alone set time aside for training sessions. The problem with not doing enough research is that legal departments tend to take the easy way out by choosing the least expensive option, just so they can get the purchase out of the way. Think about how you want to manage your legal risks and what you want to get out of legal technology.
Contemplating technology for your legal department? Download the whitepaper “Digital Transformation for Legal Departments” and explore the benefits of implementing technology that is specifically designed to cover the needs of your legal department.
