Lawyer versus Precedent

I am an experienced precedents developer with a strong belief in the power of automation to improve the delivery of legal advice.

There are a number of interlinked reasons a firm might employ someone with my skills. More and more, our industry understands the risks that can be mitigated and at the same time, the efficiencies gained when a firm’s carefully drafted deeds, documents and correspondence are systematised, stylised and automated.

Over time I’ve seen the benefits. I’ve measured the soft-savings and time given back to lawyers so they can concentrate on business development and client relations.

You start to get a bit of a swagger. Oh yeah, just let me at that stack of docs and I’ll whip them into shape. You’ll click a couple of buttons and the system will do the work.
So it was a humbling experience to meet with recognised Industrial Relations and Workplace lawyer Stephen Hughes this week. I know Stephen from a previous role and I know he’s no technophobe. I was prepared to give him the pitch when he punctured my developer’s ego – inflated over 15 years of successful client outcomes – by reminding me that automation of precedents is not always the answer.

Consider the case, he said, where a system generated enterprise agreement aggregates rates and allowances, but the underlying formula generates the incorrect rates. The error is picked up during an industrial dispute two years later. The multiplier effect on a firm’s liability is potentially staggering.

The message I took away is clear: automation of precedents is great in an operational sense but there’s a reason lawyers like Stephen are sought and valued. The protective value of a good lawyer’s time and attention to detail is crucial.

This is going to be obvious to just about anyone reading this but I think I’d forgotten it after so many years of being handed manual, risky, copy/pasted precedents and tasked with upgrading them. The point of my work shouldn’t just be freeing up hundreds of hours of drafting and review time. I am part of a process that protects my clients’ clients.

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