The idea of automating parts of your processes is enticing, but we tend to think only about automating digital processes. Can technology make things like communications and document retrieval and database population (and extraction) automatic? Sure. But we don’t usually think about automating physical processes, because it seems inherently impossible.
But that’s just a lack of imagination—especially because, truth be told, plenty of physical processes include digital components. These days, the physical and digital are intertwined.
It’s virtually impossible to avoid that phenomenon, because the digital has become ubiquitous. Even something as simple as scheduling an in-person meeting, for example, still requires digital tools. There will be some combination of text messages, emails, calendar invites, a Google Doc with the meeting agenda, and perhaps a spreadsheet or slide deck.
The legal mailroom is a terrific example of an ostensibly physical process that can benefit from automation. Physical documents come into the mailroom, and they have to be opened by hand. And then someone has to scan and upload each one to some cloud folder.
Then, someone has to read through each one, extract relevant data, enter that data somewhere, decide who else in the organization needs to address it, and make sure any relevant stakeholders are in the loop.
And, of course, there’s also effort required in making sure a given matter is moving through the pipeline once it’s been through the intake and triage process.
Tonkean’s LegalWorks has a solution for that. Once documents are scanned and uploaded, Tonkean can automate the rest of the process. We’ll get into the details of how all that works below!
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Let’s talk about automating the physical legal mailroom.
The act of digitizing legal documents is nothing new. Mail comes in, and someone scans and uploads it. But the process from there has long remained manual and time-consuming. But with Tonkean’s LegalWorks, you can automate away most of the manual work involved in legal mailroom intake.
Once you scan and upload documents, Tonkean takes over, and the magic begins.
Tonkean monitors the uploads you make to your document repository of choice (like Google Drive, OneDrive, or SharePoint). Whenever there’s a new upload, Tonkean uses optical character recognition (OCR) and AI to automatically extract necessary specified details such as claimant names, Social Security numbers, and effective dates.
Tonkean will even automatically change the file name appropriately. That’s a seemingly small thing, but anyone who’s had to slog through opening each file with a character salad of name to figure out what’s in it, then rename it manually, knows what a relief it is to no longer have to do it.
Tonkean then automatically creates a matter, notifies the parties who need to be in the loop, and kicks off relevant workflows. (You will have predefined the appropriate processes and policies for your organization.)
The legal team can find all processed documents in a centralized dashboard. The real-time dashboard allows attorneys and other stakeholders to track each matter through its lifecycle. For example, you can click into each matter and view a “pizza tracker” that shows what’s happened with each one and where it currently is in the progression.
All of the extracted information is there in an organized view, as is the scan of the document itself. That way, you can check the scan and compare it to the extracted info and edit as needed.
When you finish approving the entry, Tonkean integrates it into the workflow. For example, Tonkean could automatically create a matter inside of an application like SimpleLegal.
One of the roadblocks to implementing a new technology tool involves waiting for IT or dev to create (or edit) all the things you need on the back end. But that’s not the case with Tonkean’s LegalWorks, because it’s 100% no code—made explicitly for non-technical users.
That means anyone on the legal ops team, for example, can set up and customize the workflows. The workflow builder allows users to create automations with drag-and-drop tools. You define steps and sequences and connect to all the relevant applications and data sources.
You can see in a video below that the workflow for the aforementioned legal mailroom intake is composed of premade components, including the Drive folder, an OCR module, an AI tool like GPT to extract text, as well as commands like Update Fields, Move To Folder, Rename Document, amd Create Pizza Tracker.
There’s also a One-Click Approve button, so attorneys can quickly and easily move a matter along.
And you can even define what parameters the LLM (eg, ChatGPT) should look for and extract in the documents you upload.
And that’s that. To get a little more depth on this use case, check out this page and the accompanying blog post. And if you want a free demo of LegalWorks, head here!
Tell us about clever solutions and success stories you want your Ops peers to know about for future newsletters!
On this episode of Modern Business Operations, host Seth Colaner is joined by Brendan Raybuck, Chief Revenue Office at Clearlaw, to discuss using AI to extract data from contracts and make it accessible across organizations.
Here are the key takeaways:
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Here’s everything we did in this month’s Tonkean release notes:
Module Builder:
Custom Item Interfaces and Workspace Apps
Enterprise Components: Users can now integrate the following new data sources: Google AI, Mistral AI, Sensible, and Workday Strategic Sourcing.
Bug fixes: User source settings in Board Settings were not saving correctly when switching between Manual and Identity Provider options.
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