5 Legal Workflows You Should Be Automating (And How to Start)
The Legal Workload Is Growing But Your Team Doesn’t Have To
Today’s legal departments and mid-sized law firms are facing unprecedented pressure:
- More contracts to review
- Tighter compliance regulations
- Client expectations for faster turnaround
- Smaller teams and shrinking budgets
The old solution to hire more associates or outsource more work isn’t scalable. What is scalable? Automation. Especially when powered by intelligent, AI-driven document workflows.
But where do you start?
What parts of the legal process are safest and most valuable to automate first?
In this article, we break down the 5 legal workflows every modern team should be automating, based on real client implementations we’ve done at DataPro. You’ll also learn how to start small, build trust in AI, and create compounding impact across your practice or department.
Workflow #1: Contract Review & Clause Extraction
Ideal for: In-house legal teams, procurement, commercial law firms
Why automate it:
Manual contract review eats up hours of valuable lawyer time and it’s highly repetitive. Yet missing a risky clause, renewal date, or jurisdiction flag can have serious financial and legal consequences.
How automation helps:
Using AI-powered document processing, legal teams can:
- Extract parties, terms, governing law, and payment conditions
- Flag non-standard or risky clauses for review
- Generate summary briefs for non-legal stakeholders
- Reduce time spent on each contract by 50–80%
Real-world impact:
A DataPro client in enterprise software reduced average vendor agreement review time from 3 hours to 45 minutes, with clause-level confidence scores and human-in-the-loop oversight.
Pro tip:
Start with high-volume, low-risk contracts like NDAs or procurement templates to build trust before expanding to complex MSAs or custom terms.
Workflow #2: Client or Matter Intake
Ideal for: Litigation firms, corporate legal departments, boutique practices
Why automate it:
Intake is where critical info is gathered but it’s often done via email, PDFs, or inconsistent spreadsheets. This leads to missing data, delays in case creation, and error-prone handoffs between departments.
How automation helps:
An AI-enhanced intake system can:
- Capture and structure client-submitted information (names, jurisdictions, dates, issues)
- Auto-classify matter types based on descriptions
- Route cases to the right attorney based on type, urgency, or conflict checks
- Kick off document generation (e.g., engagement letters) automatically
Real-world impact:
A law firm we supported automated over 70% of their intake process, reducing response time for new clients from 3 days to under 8 hours, while improving client satisfaction scores.
Pro tip:
Use forms with guided logic + natural language understanding so intake adapts to how clients describe their cases, not just how you categorize them internally.
Workflow #3: Compliance Monitoring & Policy Management
Ideal for: Heavily regulated sectors (finance, energy, healthcare)
Why automate it:
Compliance requirements are growing more complex and region-specific. Legal teams often struggle to track which internal policies match which regulations, or whether employees have signed off on them.
How automation helps:
- Monitor policy changes against external laws/regulations
- Map internal documents to external legal obligations
- Alert teams when policies become outdated or non-compliant
- Track who has acknowledged or reviewed what documents
Real-world impact:
We helped a financial client set up a compliance document map using AI-powered content analysis, reducing their annual audit prep time by 60% and surfacing 15 outdated policies that had gone unnoticed.
Pro tip:
Combine automation with employee tracking, e.g., generate a report on who hasn’t acknowledged the latest Code of Conduct update in real time.
Workflow #4: E-Discovery & Document Classification
Ideal for: Litigation teams, investigations, internal compliance units
Why automate it:
E-discovery often means sifting through tens of thousands of documents, emails, attachments, scanned PDFs, instant messages. Doing this manually is costly, error-prone, and slow.
How automation helps:
Modern AI tools can:
- Identify and classify documents based on case relevance
- Extract people, dates, and relationships
- Flag potentially privileged or sensitive content
- Group documents by themes or topics for easier review
Real-world impact:
DataPro supported a litigation firm in processing 2TB of case documents in under a week, reducing human review time by 80% and identifying 94% of relevant documents automatically.
Pro tip:
Train models on your past cases and outcomes to fine-tune relevance detection over time.
Workflow #5: Legal Document Drafting
Ideal for: Mid-size law firms, internal legal teams, employment/legal ops
Why automate it:
Drafting is the bread and butter of legal work but 80% of most documents are boilerplate. Lawyers waste hours re-creating the same language, toggling between templates, or copying from old docs.
How automation helps:
With automation, you can:
- Auto-generate documents (e.g., NDAs, offer letters, engagement letters) from structured inputs
- Suggest language based on past drafts, preferences, or jurisdiction
- Ensure templates stay updated across the firm
- Reduce typos and compliance risks
Real-world impact:
A DataPro client in legal ops automated employment agreement generation using dynamic templates + GPT-based content suggestions, slashing drafting time from 90 minutes to under 10 minutes per doc.
Pro tip:
Use AI to suggest alternative language based on tone (aggressive vs. neutral) or negotiation position.
How to Start Automating Safely and Strategically
If you’re thinking: “This sounds great, but we’re not ready for full-blown legal AI,” you’re not alone. Here’s how to start:
1. Pick a single high-volume, low-risk workflow.
Contract review or intake are great starting points.
2. Keep humans in the loop.
Automate the grunt work, let lawyers review and approve final outputs.
3. Track results and improve gradually.
Measure time saved, accuracy, risk reduction, and user satisfaction. Use feedback to retrain AI models or refine rules.
4. Integrate with your existing tools.
The best legal tech doesn’t replace your stack, it enhances it. Use APIs or secure connectors.
5. Partner with a team that understands both legal nuance and AI architecture.
That’s where we come in.
Why DataPro?
At DataPro, we help legal teams go from manual, slow, and error-prone to automated, intelligent, and scalable without sacrificing trust or compliance.
✅ Custom AI workflows tailored to legal document types
✅ Human-in-the-loop systems that keep lawyers in charge
✅ Seamless integration with DMS, intake tools, CRMs, and more
✅ Security-first, GDPR-compliant infrastructure
We don’t just plug in tools, we build smart, defensible legal processes around your exact needs.
Let’s Build the Future of Legal Workflows Together
Whether you’re a legal operations leader, managing partner, or in-house counsel, automation isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s a strategic advantage.
Ready to explore how your team could automate one of these five workflows?
Let’s start with a use case and show you what’s possible.