Automating Legal Workflows: What Can Law Firms Automate?
Learn how automation helps law firms save time by tracking court updates, researching cases, and managing legal documents. This guide covers what automation is, how it works, and practical ways to use it—like scraping legal data and organizing case files.
Most law firms spend more time on administrative work than in court. Researching case law, tracking court updates, and managing legal paperwork take up a huge part of the workday.
In fact, a report by Thomson Reuters says that 74% of small firm lawyers say they spend too much time on admin tasks instead of practicing law. On average, only 60% of their time is spent on client work, while the rest goes to office management and other non-billable tasks.
This workload means long hours and less time for legal strategy and client interactions. But many of these tasks can be automated.
What is Law Firm Automation?
Law firm automation means using technology to handle everyday legal work, so lawyers don’t have to do everything by hand. Instead of spending time checking for case updates or organizing paperwork, automation tools do it in the background.
This doesn’t replace lawyers—it just helps by cutting down extra work, like pulling court updates automatically. With automation, law firms make fewer mistakes and have more time to focus on their clients.
But what exactly can be automated in a law firm?
What Tasks Can Be Automated
Here are some key tasks law firms can automate:
- Tracking court case updates – Automatically gather case rulings and new filings from legal databases.
- Getting alerts for new laws and compliance changes – Stay updated without having to check multiple sources yourself.
- Importing legal data into Google Sheets or case management tools – Keep information structured and accessible.
- Automating client communication – Send reminders, follow-ups, and case status updates.
- Gathering and organizing legal documents – Sort contracts, filings, and case files automatically.
- Scraping data from public records or registries – Collect relevant legal data for research and case preparation.
- Monitoring industry trends and competitor law firms – Track relevant updates that may impact your practice.
Automating Legal Data Collection
Law firms need accurate, up-to-date information to make decisions. Whether it’s tracking case rulings or understanding legal risks, gathering data takes time. Legal analytics helps by processing large amounts of legal info quickly.
A report by LexisNexis shows that predictive analytics can help lawyers estimate case timelines, assess risks, and even predict court decisions. These tools use AI to find patterns in legal data that would take days to uncover otherwise.
But before firms can use analytics, they need a way to collect and organize data. Automating this process ensures they always have the latest information, saving time and improving decision-making.
Where Law Firms Get Their Data
Law firms commonly use these platforms for research and case tracking:
- PACER – Federal court filings and dockets.
- Chambers and Partners – Lawyer rankings and profiles.
- Justia – Case law and legal articles.
- Martindale-Hubbell – Detailed lawyer and firm profiles.
- BAILII – UK and Ireland case law.
- LexisNexis – Trusted legal research.
- Supreme Court Websites – Rulings and decisions.
Recognize any of these? 👀
Common Challenges & How Automation Helps
1. Legal Notifications and Updates
The Problem: Lawyers need to stay on top of new laws, court rulings, and compliance changes. Checking multiple sources takes time and increases the risk of missing something important, which can lead to issues for cases or clients.
The Solution: Automating this process means legal updates are monitored for you, with notifications sent in real time. This way, you’ll always know what’s happening without having to hunt for the latest changes yourself.
2. Court Case Research
The Problem: Preparing a defense or legal argument often involves researching past cases with similar circumstances. Searching through documents and online sources eats into valuable time better spent on strategy or client work.
The Solution: With automation, case data can be pulled based on specific keywords or criteria and neatly organized into a document or spreadsheet. This gives you quick access to relevant case details, cutting down research time significantly.
3. Scraping Data and Organizing It in Sheets
The Problem: Law firms often gather massive amounts of legal data but struggle to organize and use it effectively. Inputting case details, rulings, or compliance updates into spreadsheets or internal systems is slow and prone to errors.
The Solution: Automating this allows you to scrape data directly from online sources and organize it instantly into Excel or Google Sheets. With Automatio, you can even connect this data to your internal systems via APIs, ensuring it’s always up-to-date and error-free.
How to Start Automating Your Law Firm
Getting started with automation doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s a simple step-by-step approach:
- Figure out what to automate – Look at tasks that eat up time, like tracking legal updates, gathering case data, or managing documents.
- Set your goals – Do you want to save time, reduce errors, or organize data better? Knowing your goal helps you pick the right tools.
- Choose your automation tool – Find a tool that fits your needs. Automatio lets you automate legal data scraping, case tracking, and document management—without coding.
- Set it up and test – Start with one small task. Try scraping case data, setting up alerts, or auto-updating spreadsheets. Adjust as needed.
- Optimize and scale – Once you see the results, expand automation to more areas of your workflow. Keep tweaking to make the process even smoother.
The key is to start small and build from there. Once you see how much time automation saves, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.
Automate Legal Data Collection with Automatio
Gathering legal information takes time, but you don’t have to do it all yourself. Automatio.ai can help.
Think of Automatio as a virtual assistant that works online, pulling legal information for you while you focus on your cases. It’s a no-code automation tool, so you don’t need any programming skills to use it. With Automatio, you can set up simple bots that collect data from legal websites, update records, and keep your case information organized.