Technical FAQs

Question

What is the absolute bare minimum I need to use PrizmDoc Cloud?

Answer

This will allow you to load a document via a URL using PrizmDoc Cloud. Just include your PrizmDoc Cloud API key in the POST request headers.

Please note: This is purely intended as a proof-of-concept. You should never include your API key in your client-side Javascript.

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FinTech adoption continues to accelerate. According to Wealth Professional, almost 40 percent of finance firms now prioritize the adoption of FinTech frameworks, even as new-to-market startups disrupt the status quo. 

However, spending alone isn’t enough to deliver streamlined and scalable FinTech processes. As noted by David Linthicum, Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte in a recent protocol piece, firms now face the challenge of creating “high-quality, repeatable data processes with the profusion of systems involved in generating data” while simultaneously integrating unstructured and semi-structured data sources into existing processes.

At the front lines of this fundamental framework change is digital documents and business process workflows. Let’s dive in, and look at some of the biggest frustrations facing the finance industry, the solutions they need to streamline digital processes, and how Accusoft’s ImageGear can help redefine digital document delivery.

FinTech Framework Challenges

By leveraging data-driven techniques and digital-first processes, Forbes notes that it’s possible for even startup firms to differentiate their service delivery and compete with huge financial brands — but only when digital document processes align with on-demand performance expectations. 

Consider common use cases such as loan origination, credit applications, or mortgage approvals. Many FinTech firms now target client pre-approval within 24 hours rather than the days or weeks required by traditional finance corporations. The problem? As digital document processes naturally scale, so does complexity, creating a practical paradox around three key challenges:

  • Speed — As noted above, many FinTech firms are looking to disrupt incumbent efforts by reducing approval times and increasing customer satisfaction. As the number and type of digital documents required for timely approval expands, disparate processes conspire to stifle speed. Consider a loan origination requiring identity verification, income confirmation, and current debt load documents for pre-approval, all of which are in different file formats, forcing firms to use multiple software solutions and slowing their progress.
  • Security — Cybersecurity and compliance are critical for FinTech firms to succeed, but both requirements come with rapid scaling complexity. For example, a recent FDIC document lists more than 200 types of Compliance Information and Document Request (CIDR) forms which must be customized for each financial use case. The result? Increased document processing volumes drives increased complexity and opens potential security gaps.
  • Consistency — Digital data consistency is critical to ensure accurate approvals and assess potential risks, but contrasting document processes create the ideal environment for human error. Despite best efforts on the part of employees, the more manual processes introduced into FinTech functions, the greater the chance of misplaced assets or data conversion mistakes.

Streamlined Structure Solutions

To bridge the gap between FinTech potential and fast-track document processes, companies need solutions that deliver four broad benefits:

  • Document Conversion — FinTech firms now face a diverse range of documents that often frustrate efforts to unify key data. Here, integrated conversion functionality is critical to ensure employees have the tools they need to quickly convert key documents without having to open multiple applications and manually move or manipulate data.
  • On-Demand Annotation — Speaking of data, it’s also essential for staff to collaborate on key documents, especially as many FinTech firms embrace the remote work revolution. Advanced annotation tools that allow asynchronous collaboration are essential to ensure employees always have access to the most current document version and administrators can easily determine who edited documents, when, and why.
  • Digital Compression — As digital documents become the de facto financial standard, storage space is at a premium. This is especially problematic for larger document types such as PDFs, which are often preferred by FinTech firms for the ability to easily control access, editing rights, and collaboration. Uncompressed, these PDFs can quickly overwhelm even enterprise storage systems, forcing companies to either spend more on cloud services or invest in bigger datacenters. Reducing PDF size both saves space and helps companies streamline document sharing.
  • PDF Manipulation — While read-only access makes PDFs ideal for FinTech firms that need to share specific information without introducing security risk, adjusting and editing these documents in-house often requires multiple applications and increased employee effort. Even more worrisome? Staff encountering functional limits may opt for free, online applications that could compromise document confidentiality.

Practical Process Performance

ImageGear is designed to help FinTech firms both overcome current frustrations and help future-proof financial frameworks by combining disparate document functions into a single-source application and improve overall performance. Standout features include:

  • Complete PDF Control — ImageGear provides a single-platform solution for PDF manipulation and control. Developers can easily integrate an SDK that enables application users to create, edit, view, and print PDFs from within the confines of existing applications, create searchable PDF documents, or flatten acroforms to remove file interactivity, all while automatically conforming to the PDF language standard.
  • Secure Signature Verification — Secure digital signatures now form a critical component of on-demand FinTech forms processing. If companies can’t accept and verify client signatures, they’re not able to deliver speedy approvals and meet evolving consumer expectations. ImageGear allows companies to ensure that electronic documents are authentic. It uses encryption to verify that the information  has not been altered and is coming from a trusted source.
  • Agile Annotations — Making changes to PDF files is easy with ImageGear. Staff can quickly add text, lines, hot spots, encryption, rich text, images, or even audio as needed to ensure documents are complete, accurate, and ready for approval.
  • Comprehensive Conversion Options — To deliver on the promise of FinTech performance, firms must be able to quickly and easily convert and combine multiple file types into a single PDF and convert PDFs as necessary into other file formats. ImageGear empowers developers to integrate a way for application users to quickly convert documents to PDF, create PDF/A files from raster images, and convert scanned pages into PDF searchable text using advanced optical character recognition (OCR). Annotations marks can also be converted as needed into XML files for enhanced auditability.
  • Substantial File Size Reduction — ImageGear enables file compression of up to 45 percent to save valuable storage space and utilizes automatic analysis to determine optimal compression operations for best-fit results.

Ready to embrace the future of FinTech and redefine digital document delivery at scale? Start your free trial of ImageGear today!

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FinTech investment solutions

The world of investment technology moves almost as quickly as the investment markets themselves. Without the right FinTech tools, today’s individual investors are likely to be left behind the latest financial trends. That’s why FinTech investment solutions are once again becoming a major point of emphasis for developers looking to expand access to key financial services.

The History and Impact of FinTech Investment Solutions

As a subset of the FinTech industry, “invest-tech” is sometimes used to refer to a wave of innovative investment management technologies that are helping to connect aspiring investors to the information and financial services they need to capitalize on new opportunities. Like many other FinTech applications, investment software tools have played a pivotal role in expanding access to financial markets and helping consumers take direct control of their investment decisions.

Much of the early FinTech investment market was driven by “robo-advisor” services that used sophisticated algorithms to provide customers with investment guidance. The boom reached its peak in the mid-2010s, with a record 81 new invest-tech solutions hitting the market in 2014. Since then, the number of launches has dwindled as established incumbents in the financial services sector moved in to acquire some of the most promising firms.

In many instances, those acquisitions were made to expand existing digital capabilities or to secure a new base of established investment customers. Since the typical FinTech investment user was younger and possessed fewer assets, the profit margins for many start-ups were simply too low and the costs of customer acquisition too high. This dynamic has gradually shifted the industry’s focus toward the B2B market, although crowdsourced investment platforms remain quite popular among many retail investors. 

The Current State of FinTech Investment Technology

FinTech investment platforms roared back into the public consciousness following the COVID-19 pandemic as the combination of work-from-home mandates and accumulated savings caused a rise in retail investment. Individual investors made up 19.5 percent of stock market activity in the first half of 2020, an increase of nearly five percent from the previous year. On a particularly busy day of trading, individual investors constitute a whopping 25 percent of market activity.

Thanks to mobile FinTech apps from startups and established players in the financial services industry, more people than ever before have access to investment opportunities, which has caused significant disruption to the market. The controversial rush on GameStop stock in early 2021, for instance, demonstrated just how much impact easy-to-access these platforms could have on investment trends.

This resurgence in retail investment could very well spark another wave of interest in FinTech investment apps, especially from established firms looking to expand their digital capabilities and capitalize on the growing market.

Enhancing the FinTech Investment Experience

For developers building the latest iterations of FinTech applications, there are a few key features worth focusing on to deliver a better investment experience. 

Sharing Data and Portfolios

While being able to access investment portfolio data on demand is valuable, customers are understandably concerned about the security of that data. Whether they’re building a retail investment app or a managed digital vault, developers need to provide a way of viewing private information securely. This is especially critical for digital documents. Relying on an external application for viewing or even just using the default browser viewer could potentially expose information to unauthorized users. By integrating secure, native viewing features, developers can ensure that investment portfolio data remains within a protected application environment.

Protecting Proprietary Research

One of the key benefits of working with an investment firm is having access to their market research when making financial decisions. In many cases, financial projections are calculated using proprietary formulas embedded within spreadsheets. Unfortunately, spreadsheets pose a number of security and compatibility problems. Even if a workbook is shared securely, there’s often little to stop someone from copying the proprietary formulas embedded within the cells and using it for other purposes. FinTech developers need ways to make those spreadsheets available without also compromising the valuable formulas developed over years of painstaking research.

Improving Data Capture

Making the right investment is all about having the right information. That data could come from a variety of sources, and in many instances it will need to be collected and analyzed before it can be of any use. Automating the data capture process can help to get that information into a customer’s hands faster. For example, customer information can be updated quickly by automatically extracting data from structured forms like tax filings. Scanned documents can also be converted into searchable PDFs using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which makes it easier for AI-powered tools to sift through data in search of trends and potential opportunities.

Choosing the Right FinTech Investment Integrations

Building a successful FinTech application requires developers to build innovative tools that set them apart from the competition while also implementing everyday functionality that often lies outside their experience or expertise. Features like document viewing, annotation, and file conversion may be integral components of their platform, but take both time and development resources to build from scratch. By turning to SDKs and APIs, developers can quickly roll out new features without detracting from their primary software development goals.

Accusoft has been working with FinTech investment platforms for many years, helping developers to build powerful InsureTech applications without sacrificing the viewing and image processing technology that customers expect.

  • PrizmDoc Viewer: Adds secure HTML5 viewing, annotation, conversion, and redaction capabilities to web-based applications, allowing developers to control every aspect of the viewing experience without compromising privacy.
  • PrizmDoc Cells: Provides full XLSX support for applications, making it possible to securely upload and share Excel workbooks without exposing the source file or allowing users to access and copy proprietary formulas.
  • FormSuite: A versatile forms SDK that allows developers to add form template identification and data extraction to their application, making it easier than ever to automate and streamline workflows.
  • ImageGear: In addition to conversion and compression tools, it also provides full-page OCR for converting scanned documents into searchable text.

Learn more about how Accusoft is helping FinTech developers to drive the next generation of investment technology platforms.

 

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Implementing any technology solution within an established organization can be a monumental challenge for a developer. Doing so for a legal firm that has a strong culture and longstanding processes can be even more difficult. That’s why LegalTech developers need to take a few key factors into consideration as they work on applications for the legal industry.

Build vs. Buy

One of the first questions any firm needs to ask is whether it wants to build a specialized solution or turn to an existing LegalTech application. In many cases, this comes down to a question of resources. For larger “big law” firms or legal departments within an enterprise business, internal developers may be available to build a customized application that caters to specific organizational needs. 

If the resources and development skills are on hand, building a dedicated solution can be an effective strategy. Developers can focus narrowly on the established processes used at the firm and design technology that targets clear pain points more effectively than an “off-the-shelf” product.

More importantly, as Kelly Wehbi, Head of Product for Gravity Stack, points out, building doesn’t necessarily mean starting from nothing: 

“I think a lot about how to leverage the platforms we have or could potentially purchase, but then add our own expertise and strengths on top of it. That doesn’t have to mean you have to build some entirely new interface or have to invent some new technology. It could be there’s a tool that’s out there that does exactly what you need and maybe you have to build a few customizations on top of that.”

Of course, building a solution also presents a number of challenges, especially if the project’s requirements are not well defined from the beginning. There’s a great deal of overhead involved with building new technology in terms of maintenance and ongoing support. It’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing on technology at the expense of services. But legal firms are not product companies; they need to focus instead on finding ways they can use technology to leverage their core services.

It’s that emphasis on services that drives many firms to buy the technology solutions they need rather than to build them. Existing software integrations are typically better positioned to maintain security and don’t need to be maintained as extensively. Deploying proven software integrations also helps organizations to maximize their on-premises resources and enhance their flexibility in the long-term. 

“I tend to default toward leveraging an existing platform when possible,” Wehbi admits. “Security ends up being a huge part of this and when you can leverage a company that’s solved that really well, that goes a long, long way. It offers you a bunch of options you wouldn’t have if you had to build it yourself,” Wehbi says. “That’s a pretty big undertaking to start from scratch.”

Getting Buy-In for LegalTech Solutions

Once the build or buy decision is finally made, there’s still the critical matter of executing and putting the new solution into practice. Getting feedback throughout the development and integration process is important, whether it’s gathered from anecdotal observations or some form of usage analytics. 

Neeraj Raijpal, CIO at Schroock & Schroock & Lavan, finds that implementations tend to go smoother when the development team is able to get rapid feedback from key decision makers: “The faster you get the feedback, the faster you know you’re down the right path or not. It is very frightening when the stakeholder…looks at something and says ‘This is exactly the opposite of what I expected.’ You don’t want to be in that situation.”

Ultimately, a LegalTech application’s success depends largely upon whether or not the firm as a whole embraces it. When developers are seeking to implement a solution, they need to be especially careful to take the culture of the firm into consideration. Without buy-in at the top, it will be difficult to convince anyone in the organization to commit to change. 

“If you’re trying to solve a problem because you have a deficiency in a current business process, but you’re not willing to change the process…that’s (a) disaster,” Raijpal warns. Although LegalTech solutions are designed to enhance efficiency and reduce errors, they often require people to learn how to use them or to abandon existing technology solutions.

Take, for example, a legal firm that needs to redact documents during the discovery process. The existing process likely involves printing out documents and then laboriously redacting them by hand with marker. Once that process is finished, they are scanned and saved as image-based PDFs. An HTML5 viewer with redaction capabilities could easily streamline this process to make it faster, more flexible, and more secure. Unfortunately, if the firm’s attorneys aren’t willing to adopt the new process, all of the potential efficiency benefits go to waste.

The Importance of Communication

Communication and ongoing support are critical to ensuring a successful LegalTech implementation. Developers can begin this important conversation right from the beginning when they’re designing application features. Whether they’re building everything from scratch or turning to software integrations, they need to have honest and thorough discussions to determine what specific features are needed to support legal processes. Implementing a LegalTech solution is more likely to be successful if that solution is closely aligned with the firm’s existing needs and future goals.

But the conversation doesn’t stop once the application goes live. Ongoing support and education is often necessary to help firms adopt new technology and make the most of its potential. Developers may even need to adjust some features over time as needs change. If they utilized third party software integrations to add key functionality, they need to know they can count on those vendors to support them as the LegalTech application evolves.

Make Your LegalTech Implementation a Success with Accusoft

Accusoft’s family of software integrations allow LegalTech developers to quickly add the features their clients need to modernize workflows and improve efficiency. Whether it’s PrizmDoc’s extensive document redaction capabilities that make it easier to protect privacy during eDiscovery or the automated document assembly features of PrizmDoc, developers can lean on our 30 years of document processing expertise so they can focus on building the tools legal teams require

As part of our ongoing work with the LegalTech industry, Accusoft recently sponsored a Law.com webinar on the subject of building vs buying technology solutions for legal firms. You can listen to some of the highlights with contributors Kelly Wehbi and Neeraj Rajpal along with host Zach Warren, editor-in-chief of LegalTech News, on the Law.com Perspectives podcast.

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As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the LegalTech industry in its effort to transform the processes used by law firms and legal departments, Accusoft recently sponsored an educational webinar in conjunction with Law.com entitled “Build or Buy? Learning Which Is Best for Your Firm or Department.” Hosted by Zach Warren, editor-in-chief of Legaltech News, the webinar featured Neeraj Rajpal, CIO of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and Kelly Wehbi, Head of Product at Gravity Stack, a subsidiary of the Reed Smith law firm. 

Together, the panelists brought two unique perspectives to the ongoing “build vs buy” debate, both from the software vendors who provide LegalTech solutions and the decision makers working at the legal firms who make difficult decisions regarding technology solutions.

Build vs Buy: The Choices Before the Decision

Both Rajpal and Wehbi agree that any decision involving building or buying technology solutions has to begin with defining the problem a firm needs to solve. Regardless of whether you’re working with an independent legal firm or a legal department within a larger organization, it’s critical to understand the business problem, existing pain points, and potential value of a solution.

“When you start asking the right questions,” Raijpal notes, “you sometimes come across a situation where the requirements are not very clearly defined and that is a big red flag to me because when requirements are not defined, you’re not solving anything.”

Wehbi shares that concern about the requirements gathering process, pointing out that things tend to go wrong when firms fail to consider both the scope and magnitude of the challenge they’re trying to overcome. “Organizations can struggle a lot when they jump a little too quickly to a solution or to thinking about just what the return would be on a potential new product or service offered.”

It’s also critical to make sure that the firm is willing to accept some degree of change. If existing business processes are unclear or if no one is willing to consider changing how they work, then no amount of technology is going to make a difference. Understanding the culture of the firm and securing the buy-in from leadership is absolutely critical to making any technology integration succeed whether you’re buying a solution or building one from scratch. 

The Pros and Cons of Building LegalTech Solutions

For an organization that has the resources, methodologies, and skill sets necessary to develop a solution that’s specifically designed to meet its unique requirements, building can be a great decision. The key advantage here is that it focuses specifically on the firm’s processes and user pain points, allowing developers to design a solution that is much more targeted than an “off-the-shelf” product.

Benefits of Building

  • Applications can be customized to your exact specifications, allowing them to better address your specific business needs.
  • Since you manage the solution from end to end, you retain much more control in terms of application features and functionality, how data is managed, and access security.
  • Developing a specialized solution creates room for innovative technology that can provide a competitive edge.
  • A custom-built solution presents fewer integration challenges, especially when it comes to interfacing with legacy systems used by many legal organizations.

Risks of Building

  • Building a new solution from the ground up requires a great deal of time and resources that might be better spent elsewhere.
  • Investing in custom software creates substantial technical debt that must be maintained over time and could create integration problems in the future when additional upgrades are required.
  • If the new solution doesn’t contribute enough to the bottom line to justify the cost of operations, it could lead to negative economies of scale that make it difficult for the firm to grow its business.

The Pros and Cons of Buying LegalTech Solutions

Not every organization has the development resources to build a customized solution from the ground up. If they’re not ready to make that capital investment, a cloud-based offering may be better suited to their needs. Leveraging a proven, ready-to-launch SaaS solution offers a number of advantages, but could impact how the company makes technology decisions in the future.

Benefits of Buying

  • Since SaaS services are usually cheaper and easier to implement, they are often the best option for companies with limited IT resources.
  • Cloud solutions are good for solving common technology problems that smaller firms face.
  • Already-live functionality means SaaS solutions can be implemented on a faster time frame.
  • The cloud vendor handles all building and maintenance costs associated with the platform.
  • Since the vendor sets up workflows and integrations as well as troubleshooting, your internal team is freed up to focus on other tasks.

Risks of Buying

  • Off-the-shelf solutions offer less customization and control over infrastructure and data.
  • Even industry-specific SaaS solutions are built for a general market in mind, so their features may not solve your firm’s unique requirements.
  • Since the vendor manages security, customers have less oversight over how their sensitive data is managed.
  • Working with a SaaS provider exposes firms to market risk. If the vendor goes out of business or sunsets a product, it may be difficult to repatriate data or transition to another provider.

When to Build

For firms with the development resources that are already using in-house document management solutions to streamline processes, SDK and API integrations are often the best way to enhance functionality. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Suite leverages REST APIs and advanced HTML controls to provide powerful document viewing, conversion, editing, and assembly capabilities to web-based applications. Our SDK integrations also allow developers to build the functionality they need directly into their software at the code level.

Document Assembly

Law firms need automation solutions that allow them to easily create and manage multi-part, multi-stage contracts. Thanks to Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Editor, legal teams can rapidly identify and assemble sections of pre-existing text into new content that is both editable and searchable. PrizmDoc Editor integrates securely into existing applications and delivers in-browser support to help lawyers assemble assets without resorting to risky external dependencies.

Case Management

LegalTech applications can manage and review cases much more efficiently by integrating data capture, file conversion, and optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities. The ImageGear SDK helps legal teams access case data in a variety of formats without the need for downloading additional files or relying on third-party viewing applications. It can also convert multiple file types into secure and searchable PDF/A documents, making it easy to tag files with client numbers, names, and other identifiable information. Thanks to PDF/A functionality, ImageGear ensures that firms can stay on the right side of federal regulations.

eDiscovery

The rapid transition to predominantly digital documents has fundamentally altered the way legal organizations approach the discovery process. Innovative eDiscovery processes can streamline case management while also protecting client interests. In order to implement these strategies effectively, firms need applications that provide extensive file format support and search functionality as well as redaction and digital rights management (DRM) tools capable of protecting client privacy. PrizmDoc Viewer delivers these features along with scalable annotation capabilities that make it easier for collaborators to proofread, review, and make comments to case files without creating version confusion. As an end-to-end eDiscovery toolkit, our HTML5 viewer also includes whitelabeling support so it can be fully integrated into your application’s branding.

When to Buy

For smaller legal teams looking for broad functionality without development hassles or a new firm taking its first steps toward document automation, it often makes more sense to implement a bundled, buy-in solution like Accusoft’s Docubee SaaS platform.

Document Completion

Docubee makes document management easy with drag and drop data routing. Users can quickly create legal contracts, route the appropriate data to documents, deliver contracts for approval, and facilitate signing with secure eSignature technology. 

Customized Templates

With Docubee, legal teams can create customized document templates and manage them on a section-by-section basis. Individual clauses can be added or removed as needed, allowing attorneys to repurpose document templates instead of creating them from scratch for every client. 

End-to-End Support

Two-way communication support helps firms to build better dockets and negotiate more effectively. Documents can be updated automatically and version controls ensure that everyone is always looking at the most up-to-date version of a contract. Docubee also allows users to prioritize key tasks with collaborative redlining and notification tools.

Long-Term Storage and Security

Docubee stores data for up to six years to meet eDiscovery requirements. To better protect client privacy and meet changing compliance requirements, firms can also set destruction dates for contracts, templates, and case files. Docubee is SOC2 compliant, featuring multi-layer encryption to keep data under tight lock and key.

Hear the Full Conversation

To hear the full webinar and learn more about how legal firms make the difficult choice between building or buying their next technology solution, sign up now to get access to an on-demand recording of the event. If you’re ready to learn more about how Accusoft technology is helping to power innovation in the legal industry by delivering the latest in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions, visit our legal industry solutions page or contact us today to speak to one of our product experts.

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After years of discussion and debate over the state of digital transformation in the legal field, 2020 delivered something of an ultimatum to an industry that has proven historically resistant to drastic change. The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly altered the way many law firms do business, forcing them to seek out a variety of LegalTech solutions to survive in a new environment. Many of these changes are likely to remain firmly entrenched in the coming years, so it’s worth taking a look back at the factors driving them.

COVID-19 and Change in the Legal Industry

From an outsider’s perspective, the legal industry might have appeared to be uniquely well-suited to adapt to the pandemic. Lawyers are high-skill workers with an extensive range of technology solutions at their fingertips to facilitate remote work. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which many aspects of the legal process, from client intake to discovery to filing documents with the court, are handled virtually, without anyone needing to step foot outside their home office. 

The reality, unfortunately, isn’t so simple. While it’s true that there are several innovative tools available that could support remote work, the legal industry has long struggled to adopt them at scale. Part of that has to do with the culture of law firms themselves, which tend to be driven by a traditional business model that hasn’t changed much since the 20th century. 

Although the legal industry has benefited from technology throughout its history, the use of that technology has typically fallen not to the lawyers themselves, but to their support staff. From printing out reams and reams of documents to manually tracking time in minute-based increments, many lawyers cling to outdated and inefficient practices out of habit and aversion to change.

Although the Great Recession caused some disruption to the legal industry, the impact was not significant or lasting enough to make firms fundamentally rethink their billing and technology usage. That has changed in 2020. As the industry struggles to adapt to the realities of the pandemic, firms have been forced to engage in what Jennifer Leonard, Chief Innovation Officer for University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, describes as “forced experimentation.” This includes implementing technologies already quite common in other industries, such as video conferencing tools and cloud-based collaboration software, as well as taking a more customer-centric approach to delivering legal services.

Key LegalTech Trends in 2020

The rapid transition to the remote workplace has forced legal firms to implement several years’ worth of technological change into the span of a few short months. Here are a few key LegalTech trends and needs that defined the industry in 2020.

Secure Online Communication

Successful transition to a remote work environment requires the right software tools to facilitate secure communication and collaboration. Lawyers not only need to be able to stay in direct contact with clients and colleagues, but also with the court system itself. With many judicial offices shuttered during the early months of the pandemic, courts have greatly expanded their use of e-filing, e-service, and online dispute resolution software. Various video conferencing platforms have also made it possible to conduct court hearings remotely. In a historic move, even the US Supreme Court chose to hear arguments over telephone.

With so many lawyers working remotely, however, security has become more important than ever. That’s because home networks and personal devices can present a variety of security risks. Sharing documents over unencrypted email rather than through more secure LegalTech applications could potentially compromise secure client information or legal strategies. That has driven firms to implement digital solutions that they might have been hesitant to adopt as recently as a year ago.

Online Legal Research

The research and discovery process has gradually been moving online for quite some time. According to research by the American Bar Association (ABA), nearly 70% of lawyers begin their legal research with a general search engine or paid online resource. All of that online research means that lawyers need to be able to securely access and convert multiple different file types. While many legal documents can be found in various online databases, they often exist in poorly scanned formats that are difficult to read or otherwise manipulate. In order to manage these documents effectively, firms need LegalTech applications with imaging and conversion tools that can perform image cleanup and then convert files into formats that are easier to work with.

Virtual Document Review

Whether they’re negotiating contracts or reviewing information as part of discovery, lawyers need to be able to annotate and redact documents without creating confusion over which edits are the most up-to-date. Version control has long been a challenge for the industry, whether it was multiple people working from different printed copies of a document or everyone having their own copy downloaded to a separate device. It’s no surprise, then, that LegalTech startups specializing in contract review software have had no difficulty finding investors during the pandemic. To meet the growing needs of remote legal firms, these platforms will need to deliver powerful editing and access control features that allow users to collaborate more efficiently.

Innovative Billing Strategies

Although law firms have historically weathered economic downturns better than the rest of the economy, the unique nature of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the industry hard in the first half of 2020. According to data gathered by Clio, billing and case volumes plunged in March and April before starting a slow recovery in May. That recovery has been uneven, however, punctuated by a few sharp declines even as overall caseloads return to baseline levels. Firms frequently responded by laying off staff, with 20% of firms having done so or expecting to as recently as July.

The pandemic has forced many firms to implement timekeeping and billing software to help improve efficiency and deliver more value-based services to their clients. Traditional billable hour approaches tended to discourage efficiency, so shifting to a more flexible and transparent system driven by digital tools can help provide firms with the flexibility they need to meet client needs under adverse conditions. Automating billing also allows legal teams to focus more on acquiring new clients and retaining existing clients.

More Changes Coming in 2021

Several legal industry trends from 2020 are expected to continue, or even accelerate, in 2021. Here are just a few areas that will likely remain key priorities for LegalTech developers seeking to meet the industry’s needs.

  • Improving the Client Experience: With so much of the attorney-client relationship going remote, legal firms will need to continue investing in tools that allow them to communicate and interact with their customers more easily.
  • More Cloud Adoption: Legal firms have been slow to adopt cloud-based LegalTech applications, but the pandemic has demonstrated the value of being able to access essential data and tools from anywhere at any time.
  • Organizational Innovation: As LegalTech becomes more essential, law firms will likely continue to rethink their organizational structure by adding non-legal staff to drive digital transformation.

Unlock Your LegalTech Potential with Accusoft

Developing robust LegalTech platforms that help firms overcome the challenges of the remote workplace is a major challenge. Accusoft’s collection of content processing and conversion solutions allow development teams to easily integrate the collaboration and information-sharing tools lawyers require into your applications. Whether you’re incorporating our REST APIs or powerful SDKs, we provide the functionality your software needs so your team can focus on the innovative features that will set you apart in the crowded LegalTech market in 2021 and beyond.

To learn more about how our content solutions can enhance your legal applications, talk to one of our integration experts today.

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Question

In some cases, when the Server Licensing Utility (SLU) is run, it may return an error similar to the following:

"Server License Utility – Auto register failed

Failed to auto-register. Extra code
#0100-20(RCN=Accusoft.ULF.LicenseService.GenerateLicenseKey,
RC=-56, REC=428). Contact Accusoft support. Error #1"

If, on the other hand, you manually register, you might see a message such as this:

An error has occurred: object (Accusoft.ULF.LicenseService.GenerateLicenseKey), value1 (-56), value2 (429)

What could be the cause?

Answer

A possible cause for this error is if you have a license with an expiration date and you have not specified the Access Key in the field on the SLU main window. Since these particular keys expire, our licensing needs to know which specific Access Key to use to differentiate it from any other licenses you may have with different expiration dates or OEM licenses. So, supplying the Access Key will point the license utility to the specific license in the license pool, and should resolve this error.

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In part one of our series on how APIs are empowering a new generation of LegalTech solutions, we looked at some of the technology obstacles facing today’s legal organizations. We also covered the basic principles of how API integration works and how it can bridge the gap between legacy systems and new applications. In part two, we’ll be taking a closer look at some specific API integration use cases and explain why they’re an essential part of a successful firm’s LegalTech toolkit.

4 Benefits of APIs for Legal Teams

Before going into more detail about how LegalTech API integration works, it’s worth highlighting the broad benefits APIs can deliver to a law firm. 

1. Streamlined Workflows

The average legal department relies on more than one software solution to meet their business needs. While larger firms that provide a broad range of legal services typically require more specialized platforms, even smaller legal teams deploy different software applications to address different business needs.

Thanks to API functionality, these diverse LegalTech solutions can be integrated into a single, platform-agnostic portal that eliminates the workflow disruption caused by constantly switching back and forth between programs. 

2. Remote Functionality

API integrations also make it possible for lawyers to access an assortment of LegalTech tools from any location, even if they can’t physically be at their offices. This capability is more important than ever as the legal profession continues to grapple with the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. 

Many lawyers are still working from home and communicating with their clients and colleagues remotely. In some states, virtual court proceedings might remain in use even after the pandemic. If law practices aren’t able to function effectively in a remote context, they will struggle to deliver quality legal services to their clients.

3. Competitive Advantage

Managing multiple technology resources and facilitating remote collaboration isn’t just about making work easier for legal teams. Streamlining workflows results in greater efficiency, which means lawyers can spend more time doing high-value work for their clients rather than sorting out technical issues or tracking down hard-to-find documents and files. 

It also translates into reduced costs, since key administrative functions can be automated and carried out both faster and more accurately. Law firms that invest in technology integration can deliver better services to their clients at lower costs than their competition while still retaining the flexibility to adapt to future disruptions.

4. Enhanced Security

By its very nature, the legal industry ends up handling a great deal of sensitive information. Financial records, contracts, protected health data, and private correspondence are frequently relevant to legal proceedings of all kinds. There’s also the matter of attorney-client privilege, which greatly restricts what information can be shared outside the firm. 

Without a way to securely manage files and documents, law firms leave themselves exposed to significant liability. Thanks to API integrations, attorneys can use their existing LegalTech solutions to access, share, and edit essential files safely and securely. 

PrizmDoc Viewer: LegalTech API Integration in Practice

For a better understanding of how API integration can enhance the performance of LegalTech applications, it’s instructive to look at some specific examples. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer uses a powerful collection of REST APIs to provide HTML5 document viewing functionality through a single interface. It not only allows LegalTech developers to quickly and easily integrate document viewing capabilities into their applications, but it also delivers several additional features that are particularly relevant to the legal industry’s eDiscovery process. 

Document Conversion

The digitization of the discovery process has made it easier for legal organizations to share documents and back up important data. Unfortunately, it’s also created a huge glut of electronically stored information (ESI) in a variety of formats. In addition to the large number of commonly used file formats (such as DOCX, PDF, and JPEG), firms must also deal with a variety of proprietary file formats and case-specific formats (like DICOM for healthcare clients). PrizmDoc Viewer uses an array of APIs to convert more than 100 file formats for easy presentation within a browser-based HTML5 viewer. It can also convert image-based documents into searchable PDFs or editable text files with a built-in OCR engine. Thanks to this integration, attorneys can quickly share and view documents internally or with clients and the court without having to download and install specialized applications.

Annotation

The ability to annotate and markup documents is essential for any collaborative legal process. Although many platforms make it easy to insert comments and edits into documents, these programs often don’t support more than a handful of file types and alter the original file when making annotations. PrizmDoc Viewer’s annotation functionality supports over 100 file types and allows multiple users to make layered edits that can be easily shown or hidden. More importantly, all markups exist on top of the original document, preserving the integrity of the original file to comply with state and federal preservation of data requirements. When the time comes to present documents, annotations can be burned into the file if necessary. 

Redaction

Sharing documents is always a sensitive process in the legal profession. Information may be protected by attorney-client privilege, disclosure agreements, contractual obligations, or government regulations. LegalTech applications need to be able to redact sensitive data when sharing documents with outside parties. PrizmDoc Viewer’s REST API allows users to manually redact individual sections, use search features to redact specific terms, or even programmatically redact data for pre-determined reasons (such as account numbers or Social Security numbers). Redacted content is not only hidden from view, but no longer shows up in search results and cannot be copied or highlighted.

Security

As mentioned previously, security should be a key consideration for any LegalTech solution. Firms need to strictly control who has access to data and confidential documents, whether that consists of sensitive client information or internal litigation strategies. PrizmDoc Viewer provides a few key features to help LegalTech applications maintain high levels of security.

  • DRM: Digital rights management (DRM) controls can manage who has access to documents and what functions they can use (such as printing, downloading, or viewing). This makes it easy to restrict how files are shared and track any document leaks back to their source to hold the responsible parties accountable.
  • Watermarking: PrizmDoc Viewer can hard code identifying information into documents to prove ownership and prevent the unauthorized reproduction of documentation.
  • Encryption: With so many people working remotely from potentially unsecured Internet connections, file encryption is absolutely essential for any LegalTech application. PrizmDoc Viewer uses 256-bit AES content encryption to ensure that documents remain secure throughout the collaboration process.

Transform Your LegalTech Strategy with API Integration

As we covered in part one, many legal organizations cling to outdated processes and technology due to familiarity and deeply-ingrained status quo bias. But familiar doesn’t always mean functional. Over reliance on manual processes exposes firms to increased human error and a range of potential data security risks, to say nothing of undercutting productivity. Advanced APIs offer a new tactical toolkit, a way to select best-fit code that solves specific issues and helps legal firms improve operational outcomes. Learn more about how Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer can unlock the full potential of your LegalTech applications today.

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The legal profession may not be the first sector that comes to mind when thinking about how technology is transforming the way organizations conduct business, but LegalTech is quickly becoming an essential component of practicing law. Innovative digital platforms are helping legal firms to improve efficiency and solve problems, even though choosing and implementing these solutions isn’t always an easy process.

Despite the clear benefits of legal technology, status quo bias and concerns about onboarding difficulties have combined to make many organizations hesitant to invest in these tools. The concerns are understandable given that each new solution has the potential to disrupt established processes and ways of doing business. Today’s legal clients, however, expect firms to be more responsive to their needs and move quickly to advocate for their cases. Forward-thinking legal organizations  recognize that LegalTech isn’t so much a “necessary evil” as an outright necessity to business success.

Obstacles Facing LegalTech Adoption

As the legal industry becomes more competitive, firms are under intense pressure to do more with less while also improving their administrative agility. While there are many technology solutions available to facilitate this digital transformation, the implementation process often presents a series of obstacles. The sheer number of LegalTech solutions to choose from, whether in terms of software applications and platforms or devices and locations, can be overwhelming, especially when it comes time to integrate into a coherent IT strategy.

Lawyers routinely need to switch between different platforms and systems, some of which don’t communicate with each other. A key tool in one application may not exist in another, and in many cases data can’t be transferred between them easily. The constant juggling not only disrupts workflows and impacts efficiency, but also introduces abundant opportunities for human error to creep into processes. These risks combine to make many legal organizations resistant to adopting and learning new legal technologies, and instead drive them to rely upon outdated practices and systems.

Law firms have also been forced to adapt the way they operate due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, essential tasks like meeting face-to-face with clients, conducting records research during discovery, and consulting with fellow attorneys are much more complicated. With many law offices shifting to a remote environment, legal professionals  find themselves switching between work laptops and personal devices frequently while also trying to access their firm’s intranet securely from off-site locations. All of these factors combine to reduce remote productivity since lawyers aren’t able to access the full range of their legal resources from their current location or device to create a single, cohesive workflow.

LegalTech and API Integrations

Despite the obstacles posed by adopting new tools and platforms, legal firms simply can’t afford to ignore digital transformation trends. By investing in innovative new legal technology, organizations can demonstrate their commitment to long-term growth and providing a better customer experience. Law clients understand that automation and other smart technologies can help them save money and receive better, more personalized service. In order to be successful in this environment, firms need to adopt a competitive growth strategy that is complemented by investments in technology.

Fortunately, many of the technology challenges facing legal organizations can be solved through API integrations. Short for application programming interface, APIs are an essential feature of today’s IT deployments that allow companies to get the most out of their disparate systems and applications.

How API Integration Works

At a very simple level, an API consists of code that allows two separate technology systems to communicate and interact with one another. It functions a bit like a translator and messenger, delivering user requests and data from one system to a completely separate system. This effectively allows an application to utilize the features and data of other applications without having to build out that functionality from scratch.

For example, the Uber ride-sharing app connects customers to available drivers within a specific area. It does this with a combination of smartphone geolocation and accurate maps, but the Uber app doesn’t actually have its own mapping capabilities. To get those features, it connects to Google Maps by way of an API that allows it to access the relevant navigational data and use it to connect customers to drivers.

Another key function of APIs is their ability to automate key processes and connect legacy infrastructure to newer technology systems. Data can be collected in one system, for instance, and “pushed” into another automatically. This not only eliminates the complicated (and error prone) task of manually transferring data between different systems, but also allows users to build a workflow in an application they’re already accustomed to without having to learn an entirely new system. 

More importantly, since APIs allow newer technologies, devices, and legacy applications to talk to each other, they provide firms with substantial flexibility when it comes to adding new platforms. Purchasing new software doesn’t mean throwing out existing tools, which substantially reduces the risks associated with technology investments and upgrades.

Stay Tuned for More

API integration and interoperability can deliver tremendous benefits to legal workflows and help firms better serve their clients. Stay tuned for part 2 of this series to learn how Accusoft’s API capabilities can unlock the full potential of your applications.

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