February 6, 2003
Clifford Chance picks Business Integrity to automate routine tasks - Legal IT
Clifford Chance (CC) has begun deploying Intellex and Deal Builder document assembly software from Business Integrity (BI) to automate routine tasks and processes within simple and complex matters across a number of practice areas.
The move will give CC the ability to profitably process high volume, low value work from key clients - work that the firm has traditionally either refused to accept or undertaken at a loss.
It comes at a time when most of the world's major law firms are tightening
their belts in response to a considerable downturn in the volume of high
level corporate work, such as mergers and acquisitions.
CC has a number of associates and other lawyers using applications powered
by the BI system, but the scale of the final roll-out depends on the initial
uptake and the performance of the system.
CC is already running three projects that are delivering legal work product - the business processes for these had been put in place during the evaluation process and when CC bought the system they simply went "live".
There are a number of other projects in the pipeline; the system is used both as a tool for developing templates and as an expert system.
But at the moment this is exclusively an internal project and there is no plan to roll out the system to clients via an extranet, as Linklaters has done with its Blue Flag product.
Mark Boggis, international client technology solutions manager at CC, said the firm's strategy has always been to excel as a specialist in high value areas of legal practice - and this will remain the case.
But Boggis, who joined CC from a similar role at Linklaters 18 months ago, added that the document assembly software would enable CC to backfill any spare capacity with lower value work.
According to Boggis, the main focus at the moment is using the system to standardize CC's templates across all offices and practice areas.
Secondly, CC is using it to automate certain types of low-value work. "We will use it as a tool to compete in that marketplace," he said.
By automating templates, Boggis said, the firm can reduce lawyer input for low value work types. He said: "This is very much the focus of our efforts - improving the quality of work that we give our associates. We are enabling people to operate more efficiently by removing the drudgery from their work - it is a mark of respect for our associates that we are increasing their ability to use their brains."
Boggis added: "Risk management is a side benefit for us. It is less important for us than it is for many other law firms because we are not in a commodity business area. We see this technology as an enabler."
Boggis was unwilling to specify which work types the implementation team is focusing on. He said: "It will be used for all manner of things - there are elements that can be automated in every transaction."
CC has not yet bought a global license for the system, but it has been granted the ability to deploy it globally until the end of the year, when the firm will decide whether or not to buy a firm-wide license.
At the moment, CC has just five authoring licenses for the product.
The initial deployment follows a very long period of piloting and evaluation, during which the firm looked in depth at HotDocs and BI and also considered Ghostfill when it arrived in the UK.
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