Eversheds Sutherland’s volume in-house consultancy business ES Ignite has partnered with intelligent robotic process automation SaaS provider autologyx to significantly speed up the managed services work it provides.
ES Ignite was set up in 2015 to meet the demand from in-house legal teams to outsource high volume, low risk work such as statements of work, non-disclosure agreements, renewals & extensions, short form agreements and lower value supplier contracts.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Barry Rodick (pictured), product owner at Eversheds Sutherlands Ignite said: “Eversheds launched Ignite as a way of saying ‘we can work differently’ and we were looking for a better way of doing volume work. We needed an RPA platform in the cloud to help us manage transactions. We looked at what was on the market and spoke to autologyx, even though they don’t have much of a presence in legal, to help us work on a project. Then projects two and three came along.”
Project one involved a client that needed to produce up to 3,000 leases relating to shops. Rodick said: “When we originally looked at the project, a huge volume of mail was being handled in Outlook. If ever there was a case for RPA this was it. The client has saved an hour per transaction.”
In addition to the time saved, the new process is entirely transparent and Rodick adds: “Status updates and ‘what are we acting on next, are we waiting for something to come in?’ was previously all handled over email. That has been totally blown away and with a password you can login and check on the status.”
Autologyx’ tech provides support in the management and engagement of matters across practice areas. The autologyx Fabric Automation platform enables non-technical users to generate sophisticated automated processes through a ‘no-code’ user environment without the traditional integration and deployment barriers. The platform’s Think. Build. Connect. Run. functionality is enabled through the use of drag-and-drop functionality and a powerful, ready-to-use components library, allowing deployments to be made within days rather than the usual months and without the need for external consultants.
Rodick, who is a management consultant with a background in legal tech, said: “These tools don’t have the same tech footprint or require the same level of effort as they used to. Years ago a conversation about workflow would equal a conversation about servers and capacity but not any more.”
He adds: “Eversheds Ignite doesn’t have the buying power of Eversheds but we’re a sub-department looking for people to work together with and have a joint relationship with the client and we have done that with autologyx – working with clients to build them a very effective solution.”
