Which tech tools are the lawyers in your firm using most; what are they using them for; and what good is it doing? It’s not always easy to track this, but with Laurel, the AI-infused time-tracking platform – you can, along with many other billing-related tasks.
Having the ability to see at a very granular level what every fee-earner is doing with technology helps to inform legal bills for clients, e.g. 10 minutes drafting an email, 30 mins on a Teams call, but it also does something else: it shows firms the true picture of legal technology use.
Artificial Lawyer spoke to Laurel’s CEO, Ryan Alshak, about what the time-tracking company can do now (and it’s a lot…!….see more below), but soon found out about one capability in particular that may be of interest to law firm innovation chiefs around the world: the ability to track specifically which applications are being used by whom, for what, and when.
As Alshak told this site: ‘Laurel shows [in the timelines it automatically produces for lawyer activity] what applications a time-keeper is using, including genAI tools. For example, perhaps you need to prove the ROI of having Microsoft’s Copilot.’
More on ROI in a moment, but, Alshak added: ‘We want to be the observability platform for genAI tools. You need to track digital work, so we connect to the software that lawyers use. That activity is then translated into a time entry, which can be integrated into the firm’s billing system.’
So, while the partners who focus on ensuring billable time is not lost will be pleased, for innovation chiefs it’s a very useful capability.
Taking the digital tool data you could potentially figure out:
- Which tools have become ‘legal tech orphans’, i.e. tools the firm bought but are not actually deployed anymore for work.
- What your new genAI tools are being used for, and at a very detailed level. So, for example, are most of the lawyers using X genAI tool on tasks that would never be seen as billable work, or are they are applying them directly within chargeable workflows that end up on a client’s bill?
- You could, potentially – and this may need some further development – create a whole-firm heat map showing what is happening with a range of technology across the business. You could then track that across to see how it’s helped on each matter with some additional qualitative interviews with a sample of fee-earners.
In short, if legal tech tools are there to make a positive difference, then this type of software may really help to establish that they are doing that.
Now, ROI. Showing a return on investment sounds like an objective task, but it’s actually quite tricky. You buy X tool for $10,000, it’s used on 100 tasks in a year, but does that help make you more money? In a time-based system, saving time on billable work doesn’t help. But, saving time on non-billable work does. In a fixed fee world saving time in general helps.
Then of course, beyond time is getting better answers, or reducing risk by spotting issues that junior lawyers may have missed. Conversely, a misfiring genAI tool could create additional work as lawyers benefit from some answers, but have to double-check others.
In short, ROI may sound easy, but it’s not. What is perhaps more sensible is simply to put a finger in the air, look at the data, ask some of the lawyers about their experiences, and then look at the price. Was $10,000 worth it – approximately – for the benefits you gained? If you use time-based bills for clients, then ultimately it will be a big guess. If you go fixed fees, then you are on firmer ground, as you can see the direct benefits of efficiency in billable work, i.e. you finish a job faster and now can get onto a new one, hence more $$$ for the firm.
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OK, so that’s the legal tech tracking bit. Laurel is doing plenty more. Alshak noted the company is doing very well and is opening an office in New York, plus it will open in the UK next year in London, which will be a big step for the US company. They already have offices in LA and San Francisco. They have also expanded into working with accountancy firms.
The company is tapping a combination of approaches, including genAI, to improve time recording and automate things, so firms don’t miss anything. After all, it’s hard to fill in a time sheet the day after that work was done.
‘We are able to provide law firms with a profit lift because there is an increase in realisation [of billable work],’ Alshak explained.
Also, he noted that they save lawyers lots of time in time recording, ‘which is very meta!’.
I.e. law firms lose potential earnings not just because lawyers, being humans without perfect memories, forget some of the things they’ve done, but also because they spend useful time each day filling in time sheets.
Another positive that Artificial Lawyer can see here is, as Alshak highlights, that if you’re really collecting the true picture of work that goes into each type of matter – and they can code things in any way a firm wants – then it’s easier to build AFAs, such as fixed fees.
‘You can use this data to do better AFAs, as you can track your profit margins and understand the non-chargeable time [related to a matter],’ he added.
‘We bring a quantitative approach,’ he stated.
Another aspect here is showing how working from home changes things. Do lawyers do more or less billable work at home? Does WFH change how they work? This data collection platform can show that.
Laurel, as noted, is using genAI as well. They use a mix of models, a RAG system, and more traditional rules-based coding to surface, summarise, and classify billing data – and compare versus billing guidelines for each client. All of this is with one central aim: to do the best job possible when it comes to capturing what a lawyer does at work and turning that into revenue.
And one last thing. There is a Q&A chat interface so supervising partners can ask questions of the system. They can ask about who did what, they can ask what aspects of the deal took what time, and more.
To conclude, while all of the above will be useful to law firms, the one aspect that this site really likes is the ability to see what a firm’s ‘legal tech estate’ is actually doing, or rather what the lawyers at the firm are doing with it – and not in isolation, e.g. not just that XYZ lawyer used genAI tool ABC for 1 hour today – but it shows exactly where this use fits into the rest of their work and how that corresponds to the rest of their activity on a billable matter.
As noted, proving ROI is not simple, but at least firms can get a sense of whether the tools they have bought, genAI or otherwise, are really being used effectively.