Adapt and Achieve: using automation to reduce legal workload

Technology has allowed for many positive changes in many fields. The legal field is no
exception. Stacks of paper can be compressed digitally for easy access and sorting, and even if
a physical copy has to be kept for record-keeping purposes they can be stored in a different
area while the digital copies are used in practice.

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“I think the pandemic is when a lot of digital thinking started to occur...we were kind of forced
into that line of thinking because of everything happening online,” says Tristan Hendricks, a
student at New York University (NYU) School of Law.

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Hendricks was in his high school robotics program, where he learned how to program with
Python. Eventually he got so proficient at it that he used it to make his life easier.

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“The firm I interned at had a very specific way of creating memos for closed files…I made a
program that automated the process for me and instead of taking me three minutes to do, it took
me around five seconds, including me checking it over quickly.” Hendricks notes that although
three minutes wasn’t that long, it does add up when he’s generating 10-20 at a time.
Hendricks says that the main issue with automating file processing is the number of documents
in different formats.

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“Sometimes correspondence and files are stored on the network, sometimes they’re physical
copies, and sometimes they’re scans of physical copies…it gets really confusing.” Hendricks
says that it’s difficult to create a program to automate things when the data is hard to compile.
“Either you have to set up the whole firm to use certain templates, which is very difficult when
the firm is large, or you have to do it manually, which is very time-consuming. I don’t know if a
full-time lawyer could have time to do all that.”

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Hendricks says that his main hope is for an AI to be able to process and combine all of the
mediums into one. “If it could make all the data the same format or somehow detect relevant
fields and fill them out…you could probably do things like create a motion in around 30
seconds…”

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“I’m excited to see where technology is going to go. I hope by the time I’m working it’s common
practice to have standardized templates. That way we’d do less legwork and focus more on the
fun, problem-solving side of things.”

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Hendricks notes that the main reason he thinks things haven’t changed too much is because of
a lack of interest. He says that out of the many people in his classes, he has only met one other
person with his interest in programming.

“I think the biggest issue is also that a lot of things are done old-school…a lot of people think ‘if
it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’. I understand it though, since if you try something new and it doesn’t
work out you might be in danger of wasting lots of time and it isn’t fun playing catch-up.”

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