Lewis Silkin LLP

Law firms face relentless pressure to handle high volumes of repetitive document work — employment agreements, matter intake, court filings — while clients increasingly expect faster turnaround and lower fees. At Lewis Silkin LLP, a UK-headquartered firm with a broad commercial practice, lawyers were spending significant time on document creation tasks that followed predictable patterns but still required manual effort each time. This created a ceiling on capacity and made it difficult to offer clients meaningful fee reductions or self-service options. The status quo meant attorney hours were consumed by drafting mechanics rather than legal judgment.

Lewis Silkin implemented NetDocuments' document automation platform, integrating it into the firm's existing document management workflows. The platform combines traditional document assembly with generative AI capabilities — enabling lawyers to build no-code automated workflows for recurring document types without requiring developer involvement. CTO Alex Bazin oversaw deployment, which included both internal lawyer-facing automations and client-facing self-service automations that allow clients to generate certain documents directly. This dual-track approach — automating internal production and externalizing select workflows to clients — was made possible by the platform's conditional logic, auto-population, and secure client access features. NetDocuments served as both the document management system and the automation layer.

Following implementation, Lewis Silkin achieved measurable improvements across both efficiency and client service:

• 100+ attorney hours saved across the firm's lawyers as a direct result of automated document workflows
• Reduced client fees passed through on matters where automation eliminated manual drafting time
• Client self-service adoption underway, with some clients already using firm-built automations independently

Beyond the headline numbers, the firm established a repeatable pipeline for identifying and automating additional document types. CTO Alex Bazin noted the firm is now "building a process and pipeline of work" — indicating the initial deployment is a foundation for ongoing automation expansion rather than a one-time project.

• Pass efficiency gains to clients directly — reduced fees from automation can become a competitive differentiator, not just an internal win.
• Client self-service is a viable service model — law firms can extend automation beyond internal use to offer clients direct document generation access.
• No-code platforms lower the barrier to entry — firms do not need developer resources to build and maintain automated workflows.
• Start with repeatable document types — mapping high-volume, predictable drafting tasks first delivers the fastest measurable ROI.
• Treat early deployment as infrastructure — building a process pipeline from the start enables compounding time savings as more document types are automated.