Founded in 1826, FBC Manby Bowdler (Midlands) Limited is an award-winning, full-service law firm providing expert legal advice to businesses and individuals. Operating across six branches in the West Midlands, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, the firm employs over 200 people, including 20 Partners.
The Challenge
The firm faced a common issue: the time-intensive process of analysing Residential and Commercial Property documentation. This inefficiency led to extended amounts of time being used to review and collate key information as part of property reports. The firm wanted to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline this process by:
- – Identifying key points in property documentation.
- – Translating legal jargon into plain English.
- – Generating reports with enhanced efficiency and quality.
The ultimate goal was to reduce time and improve overall service quality while encouraging a culture of experimentation and adoption in the firm of cutting-edge technologies.
The Technology Solution
FBC chose Orbital Copilot, a property diligence automation platform, to address their challenge. Orbital Copilot integrates AI with comprehensive property data to automate and enhance property transaction processes. Its capabilities include generating 43 types of reports, such as:
- – Lease reports
- – Title reports
- – Search reports
- – Planning reports
FBC utilised Orbital Copilot’s customizable features to create bespoke report blueprints tailored to their needs. This allowed FBC to improve workflows while maintaining control over the precision and standards of their property diligence processes.
The TiPS Project
To assess the technology’s benefits, FBC made Orbital Copilot available to the commercial property fee earners. As part of the project:
- – Fee earners used Orbital Copilot to generate lease summaries as part of efforts to simplify lawyers’ workflows, particularly for apprentices tasked with drafting lease reports.
- – The impact of the use and impact of Orbital Copilot on transaction efficiency was monitored.
- – Focus was placed on how the technology could help with risk mitigation and high standards of diligence, whilst also improving client service through improved reporting formats.
- – The potential for integration with FBC’s Case Management System (CMS) was explored.
Lessons Learned
FBC identified several key insights during the project:
1. Understanding the project: Selecting the right technology for the use case was essential. FBC started with a clear view of the problem/opportunity and what a solution needed to deliver. They also started with a manageable project, identifying one practice group and one office as the starting point for adoption. The combination of a clear use case and an understanding of who would benefit from the technology, how, and ways of keeping the scale of the implementation manageable in the initial adoption stages created an effective proof-of-concept project.
2. Communication: the conditions for adoption were created effectively at FBC by engaging all fee earners, and especially partners, in discussions about the adoption project. Rather than relying solely on the IT team to manage the project, FBC created an effective partner-led adoption process, which involved everyone who would use or help implement the technology. The success of the communication is partly related to the emphasis placed on both the benefits for fee earners and the firm, alongside the benefits for clients in terms of the quality and effectiveness of the services provided.
3. Critics: At FBC everyone was supported during the adoption process, including those more reluctant to adopt. This meant engaging with those more passive and reluctant to adopt. It also meant ensuring effective training was in place, focused on how to get the kinds of outputs desired from the technology. Training for staff was supported by Orbital and their customer success programme that provided active help for staff when they were using the system, practically solving problems and allowing people to get the most from the system.
4. Develop: The TiPS project was viewed as part of a longer-term process of adoption. By scanning the horizon for other new technologies that fit with identified use cases in the firm, and by learning from the success of the TiPS project, FBC was able to identify further opportunities for adoption, including through a trial of Microsoft Copilot.
Testimonial
“It’s been a very positive experience. Lots of specialist expertise they’ve given us in terms of tips for implementing new projects.” – Stephen Burke, FBC
Watch the video case studies below:
Part One
Part Two