How to document a law firm's processes before automating them

Each person at a firm does a task a little differently. The differences are hard to see until someone leaves, or until the task is handed to a system.

When the steps are not written down, an automation project spends its first weeks discovering them. That discovery takes time whoever does it.

We found no study that measures how documenting a process changes the outcome of an automation project, so we give no figure.

What we can say is reasoning, not a measurement: a task described in plain steps is easier to test, to review and to hand over than a task nobody has described.

Pick one task, not the whole firm. Choose one that is repeated and easy to describe, as in our article on what to automate first. Then write it down in this order.

• The trigger: what starts the task
• The steps in order, in plain language
• Who does each step and what they need to do it
• The exceptions: what happens when something is missing or goes wrong
• Where the task starts and ends in the case record
• The steps that need a person's judgment

Illustrative example, not a client case. "New inquiry by email. Step one: the receptionist copies the name and the reason for contact into the inquiry list. Step two: the receptionist sends the standard acknowledgement. Step three: the intake attorney reads the inquiry and decides whether to call."

A procedure this short already shows which steps repeat and which need a person.

• The person who does the task reads the procedure and corrects it
• The document is short enough to be read: one page for each task is a good rule
• It is stored where the team can find it, with the date it was last checked
• Someone is named to update it when the task changes
• It describes what happens, not what should happen
• It holds no client information: use sample names