Sally Danby, Cloud Forms Product Manager at Advanced Legal
By Sally Danby, Cloud Forms Product Manager at Legal Futures Associate Advanced Legal
Regulatory change has always happened, but currently there are two particular accelerants: Brexit and the pandemic. Of course Brexit has happened now, but actually many pending changes haven’t happened yet, since the deal detail is only now available. Now they know, changes will be fed through in the coming months. These will include, for instance, changes to corporate law e.g. the impact of where directors are domiciled; and to divorce law, e.g. where are the assets? Intellectual property law is also heavily tied to EU legislation.
As much as the intention is to replicate EU law into UK statute initially, there’s still a likelihood of some future divergence. At the very least, references to EU legislation will need to be updated.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 is driving additional short notice regulatory changes impacting everything from tax and how courts work, to repossession deadlines. The point is that firms need to keep up with this blizzard of change as efficiently as possible, yet undoubtedly remote working makes that harder. Firms can still conduct CPD and ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions, albeit remotely. But people get their understanding of what’s changing in a number of ways and it’s nearly impossible to duplicate the “water-cooler grapevine” of office chat when people are dispersed. For these reasons, legal form libraries have become more useful and important than ever.
The benefit of legal form libraries is that they ensure lawyers are using current forms at all times. Moreover, when the library is cloud-based, it ensures remote access to forms, at any time, on any device. It’s also advisable to seek out cloud-based legal form libraries that provide enhanced functionality. The things I have in mind include a “news feed” that includes pending updates, so people are prepared for upcoming changes; and systems that gives users the option of continuing on with a superseded form or changing to the latest version.
Form libraries reassure firms that users are always using the right form. They eliminate the costs of rejections, resubmissions and non-compliance. They relieve the firm of the now considerable task of continually checking on what’s new. The advantages of using form libraries have always been apparent, but in today’s perfect storm of circumstances the case for using them is even stronger.
If you would like to continue the conversation, Advanced are running a free webinar on 22 April. This webinar will explore how digital technology has replaced paper-heavy, process-driven working practices that would be previously required to keep up with these changes. We will introduce to you our cloud-based legal forms software, Cloud Forms, which offers your firm a solution to reduce the burden of non-billable administration tasks and overhead costs, whilst allowing you to collaborate effectively with colleagues and clients, wherever you are working from.
You can register for free here
