Automation of Incoming Legal Documents – RPA Case Study
Background
Winn Solicitors is a leading UK claims management company, offering a no win, no fee accident claim service. Based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Winn pride itself on offering a complete service including access to vehicle repair, hire and medical services.
In delivering this legal claims service, Winn receives a high volume of court documents on a daily basis. These include documents such as Notice of Issue, Judgement for Claimant, Notice of Hearing and Notice of Transfer of Proceedings. Each document type has variable court deadlines for response/return.
The original manual process involved the court documents being scanned and assigned to the case handler’s task list within their case management system as a “generic” Court document. This relied upon the handlers opening each legal document, to identify the type of Court document manually entering the relevant information, uploading and storing the documents ready for processing. Each document took around 3 minutes to process. If it wasn’t actioned in a timely manner, this could not only be detrimental to the client’s case but could also result in missed deadlines.
Key Drivers
Winn Solicitors were primarily looking to reduce manual processing for their fee earning case handlers and solicitors, which ultimately would reduce the case duration and provide a quicker outcome for their clients. In turn, this would increase client satisfaction and speed up incoming revenue.
The Solution
Cleardata offers Robocloud RPA (Robotic Process Automation) As A Service. This enables manual tasks to be completed using a digital workforce of cloud-based software robots. The robots work 24/7, 365 days a year.
Following a consultancy day to fully understand the process, Cleardata’s team mapped out the proposed automated RPA solution. This involved intelligently classifying and automating the incoming court documentation on arrival. The new process includes:-
- Physical incoming court documents are scanned by Winn and stored to a shared server.
- Documents are OCR’d to enable text to be searched and recognised.
- Court documents are identified and sorted by type.
- Information is automatically extracted based on the court document type. Winn has defined rules for each document type to decide what data needs extracting.
- Semi intelligent processing is completed. For example text such as “Reply within 14 days of this communication” is recognised, interpreted and turned into a data point.
- The client ID and corresponding case is identified.
- The robot navigates to the correct client/case In ProClaim and drags and drops the files from the shared server onto the ProClaim interface.
- This triggers actions, tasks and workflow within ProClaim for the case handlers to access and process the file.
RPA Benefits
Save Time 
Fee earning staff are spending 3 minutes less on each case, saving a total 62 hours per week across the board. This allows them to spend less time on manual data entry, processing and validation of documentation and more productive time on claims handling.
Increase Accuracy
Data is automatically recognised and validated which improves data quality and reduces human error.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
The claims case duration is processed faster, providing a faster outcome and increasing customer satisfaction.
Faster Processing
The automatic recognition of key dates from court documentation and conversion into data helps to speed up claims processing. The Claims handlers receive automated tasks and actions to deal with the incoming documents. This helps to avoid missing court deadlines which can be detrimental to the case.
Client Feedback
“Cleardata has been successful in automating the manual processing of our incoming court documents using RPA. The digital worker, or robot, provides an extra pair of hands for the case handler, performing the essential manual data processes. It identifies the incoming document type, extracts key information, recognises key dates and uploads the documentation into the relevant case in ProClaim. This, in turn, creates tasks and actions for the case handler.
Winn Solicitors is now saving 3 minutes per case, amassing to 62 hours a week in total for our fee earners. This allows them to focus on more productive areas of the claims case.
In addition, the accuracy of data has increased and we’re able to reduce case duration, which will increase client satisfaction and help revenue come in faster.
Cleardata has tackled the most challenging and complex dataset in our legal organisation. Anything after this will be much easier to automate. This is just the tip of the iceberg and there’s a large scope to automate other tasks within our business. It will be like a domino effect, with a potential to reduce hours of manual processes. The next project we are looking to tackle is incoming medical reports, documents and emails.
The whole process working with Cleardata was easy, accommodating and accessible. It was like working with a fellow colleague, rather than a third party.
We thought their RPA team were very flexible. It’s been a brand new type of project for Winn Solicitors, and it felt like it was never too much to ask to alter the process during the various stages as testing and implementation was completed.”
CIO, Winn Solicitors