How much time does your legal team spend on administrative tasks? From managing requests and reviewing contracts to overseeing compliance, these routine duties not only drain resources but also cost your firm valuable time and money. This is time that could be better spent on high-value work, like shaping business strategy or providing critical legal insights.

What if there’s a way to free up those hours, allowing your team to focus on what drives your firm forward? Legal intake automation, using tools like Jira workflows, can help make that possible. By streamlining routine tasks and improving communication, your team can reclaim time, reduce costs, and operate more efficiently. Would you like to save up to 10 hours a week, giving your team the time and capacity to focus on the tasks that truly matter?

The Cost of Inefficient Legal Intake

According to a survey by Thomson Reuters, 74% of lawyers at small law firms report spending too much time on administrative tasks instead of practicing law. This reveals a significant challenge many legal teams face: inefficient manual intake processes that waste valuable time and create unnecessary stress.

Legal departments face a range of challenges due to inefficient intake, including missed opportunities, delayed responses, errors, and compliance risks. These issues accumulate quickly, reducing productivity and increasing operational risks, which affect both team morale and organizational outcomes.

Common Issues in Manual Legal Intake:

• Time-Consuming Manual Tasks: Sorting through emails, spreadsheets, and scattered documents consumes valuable time that could be better spent on strategic legal work. The result is wasted effort and potential errors that delay decision-making.
  
• Missed Requests or Lack of Follow-Ups: Without a structured system, tasks can easily slip through the cracks, resulting in missed deadlines and communication breakdowns. This disorganization increases stress and disrupts workflow across the department.
  
• Lack of Visibility and Oversight: Without a centralized system, tracking the status of ongoing legal requests becomes difficult, and decision-makers are left in the dark. This lack of transparency affects the department’s ability to manage resources and priorities effectively.
  
• Compliance Issues: Manual processes make it harder to ensure all tasks adhere to compliance requirements. Legal teams risk missing regulatory deadlines or overlooking key compliance steps, which exposes the organization to potential legal and financial consequences.

These inefficiencies limit the capacity of legal teams to perform at their best. Legal departments are expected to support the organization’s broader goals, but without streamlined processes, they become bogged down in administrative tasks that prevent them from making meaningful contributions.

By implementing automated systems such as Jira workflows, legal departments can streamline intake, improve compliance, and gain better visibility into ongoing matters. These tools free up valuable time, reduce errors, and allow legal teams to focus on providing strategic value to the organization.

What Is Legal Intake Automation?

Legal intake automation is the process of streamlining the way legal requests are captured, tracked, and processed within your team. It eliminates the need for manually managing each request, replacing time-consuming administrative work with automated workflows. By leveraging technology to automate information collection, task assignment, and routing, legal teams can operate more efficiently, freeing up resources for more strategic tasks.

With legal intake automation, several key processes are optimized:

• Automated Task Routing: Requests are automatically directed to the right person or department based on predefined rules. This ensures that tasks are addressed by the most appropriate team members, reducing delays and confusion. For example, a contract review request can be instantly assigned to the relevant attorney or department without manual intervention.
  
• Data Capture: Information is collected through digital forms, allowing legal teams to gather the necessary details upfront. This reduces the need for follow-up or clarification, ensuring that all required information is available from the start. For instance, a form that automatically collects key contract details prevents delays caused by missing information.
  
• Status Tracking: Real-time visibility into the progress of legal requests enables teams to monitor and track tasks efficiently. Managers and team members can easily see which tasks are in progress, which are pending, and which are complete. This ensures that no task is overlooked and deadlines are met.

By automating these tasks, your legal team can operate more efficiently and focus on high-priority work.

Why Jira Workflows?

Jira is widely recognized as a powerful project management tool, traditionally used for software development. However, its flexibility and robust features make it an ideal solution for legal departments seeking to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Jira workflows allow legal teams to automate routine intake processes, creating a more efficient and transparent system that enhances both task management and overall productivity.

What makes Jira workflows particularly effective is their flexibility. You can easily customize workflows to suit the unique needs of your legal department. Whether you're handling contract reviews, compliance checks, or internal policy requests, Jira’s workflows ensure that tasks are routed to the right person with minimal effort. With automated task assignments, no request is missed, and every team member stays aligned, contributing to smoother operations.

The key benefits of using Jira workflows for legal intake include:

• Customizable Workflows Tailored to Your Team’s Needs: Jira allows you to design workflows that match the complexity of your legal processes. Whether it’s simple task delegation or multi-step approvals, the system adapts to your unique requirements.
  
• Seamless Integration with Other Legal Tools and Software: Jira integrates easily with other tools and platforms, ensuring a unified approach to managing legal requests. This integration allows your team to work within a centralized system, reducing the need for multiple platforms and improving data accuracy.
  
• Real-Time Tracking and Transparency: With Jira, you gain complete visibility into the status of each task in real-time. You can track progress, monitor deadlines, and ensure tasks are completed on time without needing manual follow-ups.

With the right setup, Jira workflows not only streamline legal intake but also improve overall efficiency and collaboration within your team.

Steps to Implement Jira Workflows for Legal Intake

Implementing Jira workflows for legal intake is a straightforward process that can significantly improve efficiency. Here’s how to get started:

1. Define Your Intake Process: Identify the types of requests your legal team regularly handles and the necessary steps for each request. This could include everything from contract reviews to compliance checks. Understanding the full scope of your team’s needs helps in tailoring the workflow to ensure each request is processed efficiently.
   
2. Set Up Customized Forms: Create intake forms designed to capture the essential data for each request type. This ensures that all relevant information is collected upfront, minimizing the need for follow-up requests later. For instance, when you receive a contract review request, your form can prompt for details such as contract type, involved parties, and any specific areas of concern. This ensures your team has the right context to move forward quickly.
   
   
3. Design Your Workflow: Design a workflow that automatically assigns tasks to the right team member, tracks the progress of each request, and triggers alerts when actions are required. The workflow should move requests through predefined stages, keeping everything organized and visible. For example, once a contract review request is submitted, the system can automatically route it to the appropriate legal expert and send a confirmation to the requestor.
   
4. Integrate with Other Tools: If your team uses other legal tools, such as contract management software, integrating them with Jira can further streamline your processes. This integration ensures seamless data flow across platforms, reducing duplication and the risk of errors.
   
5. Train Your Team: Ensure that your team is trained on how to use the new system effectively. This training ensures that everyone understands how the workflow operates, which increases efficiency and adoption.

Once set up, Jira workflows will help your legal team save valuable hours each week, allowing them to focus on more strategic, high-priority work.

Overcoming Common Challenges

While Jira workflows offer significant benefits for automating legal intake, teams may encounter common challenges during the adoption process. Recognizing and addressing these challenges early on is crucial for ensuring a smooth transition.

• Resistance to Change: Teams often resist new systems because they are familiar with old processes. Overcoming this resistance requires clear communication about the benefits of automation and engaging team members in the setup process. By highlighting how Jira workflows can save time and reduce administrative burden, you can get team buy-in.
  
• Ensuring Data Accuracy: When transitioning from manual processes to automation, ensuring the accuracy of input data becomes essential. Careful planning during the setup phase, including validation checks within workflows, can help prevent errors from entering the system and ensure that data is correctly processed.
  
• Implementation Rollout: Implementing Jira workflows requires a phased rollout to allow team members time to adapt. Starting with a pilot phase or a single department ensures that any issues are identified and resolved before they are implemented across the entire organization. This gradual approach makes the transition smoother and less disruptive.
  
• Data Security: With automation, it’s crucial to ensure that sensitive legal information remains secure. Ensuring that Jira is appropriately configured to meet security standards, such as role-based access and encryption, helps mitigate risks and ensures that data remains confidential throughout the workflow process.

By addressing these challenges proactively, your legal team can experience the full benefits of Jira workflows, ultimately driving efficiency and improving the intake process.

Measuring Success: How to Track the Impact of Automation

Once Jira workflows are in place, it’s essential to measure their impact to ensure that the legal team is operating more efficiently. Key metrics allow you to track progress, identify areas for improvement, and justify the investment in automation.

• Time Spent Per Intake Request Before and After Automation: Track the average time it takes to process an intake request before automation and compare it with the time after automation. This will give you a clear picture of the time saved per request. For example, suppose your team previously spent 30 minutes manually sorting and assigning tasks, and now that process takes just 5 minutes with automation. In that case, the difference can be measured in real, quantifiable terms.
  
• Reduction in Follow-up Tasks and Administrative Work: One of the most noticeable improvements will be the reduction in manual follow-up tasks. By automating task routing and reminders, your team will spend less time chasing down missing information or re-assigning tasks. Tracking this reduction helps show the real impact on your team’s workflow.
  
• Improvements in Intake Request Resolution Time: With Jira workflows in place, you should see a faster resolution time for intake requests. Monitor how long it takes to complete each intake task from start to finish, and compare it to the time before automation. A decrease in the time it takes to resolve requests will directly reflect the success of the automation process.

How Jira’s Reporting Tools Can Help Track and Optimize Workflows 

Jira offers built-in reporting tools that provide real-time data on task status, team performance, and bottlenecks. These tools enable you to track progress, identify inefficiencies, and adjust your workflows as needed. Whether it’s monitoring the volume of intake requests or analyzing task resolution times, Jira’s reporting features give you the visibility you need to optimize your workflows continually.

Conclusion: Transform Your Legal Intake Process with Automation

If your legal department is overwhelmed by manual intake processes, it’s time for a change. Implementing Jira workflows can save your team up to 10 hours a week, freeing up valuable time for more strategic tasks.

Automating routine processes not only increases efficiency but also enhances data accuracy and provides real-time visibility into ongoing requests. By using Jira workflows, your team can focus on higher-value legal work, reducing the strain of administrative tasks.

To get the most out of Jira integration and ensure a strong return on investment, it's essential to have the right expertise. Without proper guidance, the setup process can slow down your team's operations. Lawtrades connects you with experienced attorneys who specialize in legal operations, providing the support you need to implement and scale Jira workflows effectively while maintaining efficiency across your team.