Customer case study
Legal document automation at scale: a Ropes & Gray case study.
A legal document automation platform has failed long before anyone files a complaint about it. The tell is quieter than that: lawyers stop asking about it.
That’s what happened at Ropes & Gray, and it’s what led Sarah LaBeche, the firm’s Senior Practice Technology Advisor, to a blunt conclusion.
The problem wasn’t her lawyers. It was the tool.
For nearly a decade, LaBeche has worked on legal technology at Ropes & Gray, evaluating tools and helping the firm’s lawyers put them to use. In the first episode of Avvoka’s Built to Scale webinar series, she walks through the whole arc: how she diagnosed a legacy platform that was quietly failing, what she looked for when the firm went back to market, and what changed once Ropes & Gray migrated to Avvoka.
The signs your legal document automation platform has failed.
The clearest sign is time to value, not lack of enthusiasm. Ropes & Gray’s lawyers were never short on interest - they’d get excited about a new template, then watch it stall for months.
Time to value.
How long does it genuinely take to go from idea to a template lawyers actually use? Months and years aren’t sustainable benchmarks anymore.
A real partner, not a slick pitch.
Does the vendor treat requests as a roadmap conversation, or as a closed door?
Real automation vs. automation in name.
Can the platform handle nested conditions, cross-references, and multi-layered logic, or does it fail a few branches in?
Before and after
What changes when a firm switches legal automation software.
The clearest evidence is what happened to the number of live use cases. Ropes & Gray went from a couple of active templates, maintained by a small developer team, to nearly 20 and growing.
The shift
"Because there’s such a low barrier to entry, attorneys can pick up this tool and start coding tomorrow if they want."
Sarah LaBeche, Senior Practice Technology Advisor, Ropes & Gray
Before & After
Active use cases: a couple, to nearly 20 and growing
Who builds templates: a handful of developers, to developers and attorneys directly
Time to automate: months per template, to much faster
Lawyer sentiment: losing interest mid-project, to asking what else can be automated
Sarah LaBeche, Senior Practice Technology Advisor, Ropes & Gray
Where to start
Where should your firm start?
With an honest audit of what’s already repeatable, not with a vendor demo. Sarah’s approach, in order.
Check whether you’re templated:
Start with an honest audit of what’s already repeatable, not a vendor demo.
Find the biggest blast radius:
Prioritise the templates that touch the most deals, the most often.
Pick a tool built to be tested on:
Not just sold to you. That’s where most firms get stuck.
FAQs
What are the signs a legal document automation platform has failed?
What changed after Ropes and Gray switched to Avvoka?
Where should a firm start when evaluating document automation?
The takeaway
The best platform removes friction, not features.
Ropes & Gray isn’t a notable story because they decided to switch tools. What’s worth paying attention to is how they diagnosed the problem, and what they asked before signing anywhere else.
Watch Sarah LaBeche walk through the full migration on demand.