Workflow Automation Checklist
A practical checklist for designing or improving legal workflow automation, organized by process design, approvals, notifications, and escalation.
Use this checklist to evaluate an existing workflow or to sanity-check a new one before it goes live. It's organized around the same four building blocks covered throughout this resource center, so gaps in any one area are easy to spot.
Process Design
- Is the matter type this process applies to clearly defined?
- Is the sequence of steps documented, not just known informally?
- Does every step have a single, clearly assigned owner?
- Is there a clear definition of "done" for each step?
- Does the process account for reasonable exceptions, with a defined path for handling them?
Approvals
- Is it clear who needs to approve, and in what order?
- Does each approval step trigger automatically once the prior step completes?
- Do approvers receive enough context to decide without requesting more information?
- Is there a defined path for what happens if an approver doesn't respond?
- Is every approval decision recorded somewhere traceable?
Notifications
- Are reminders tied to the work itself, rather than depending on someone remembering to send them?
- Does each notification reach the actual current owner of the step?
- Is the timing calibrated to the urgency of the matter type, not a single default for everything?
- Is there a defined next step if a notification goes unanswered?
- Is there a record of what was sent and when?
Escalation
- Is there a defined threshold for what counts as a stalled step?
- Does escalation timing scale with the risk of the matter, rather than treating everything the same?
- Is there a defined next step if the first escalation notice goes unanswered?
- Does escalation reach someone who can actually resolve the issue?
- Are escalations and their resolutions recorded for later review?
Metrics
- Is cycle time tracked by matter type, rather than as a single blended average?
- Is approval turnaround measured separately from the rest of the process?
- Is escalation frequency tracked, and reviewed for patterns?
- Does someone own reviewing these metrics on a regular basis?
- Are metrics used to prioritize process improvements, rather than collected without a clear next step?
How to Use This Checklist
Work through it section by section for a single workflow at a time, rather than trying to assess every process in the department at once. Any "no" answer points to a specific, addressable gap — start with the ones tied to your highest-volume or highest-risk matter types.
Related Reading
This checklist won't catch every gap in every process. It will reliably surface the ones that matter most — the ones quietly costing time every single day.
Stop coordinating by hand. Watch one matter type run itself.
We'll build a free, working proof of concept on one of your real legal workflows — approvals, notifications, and escalation, configured and running against an actual matter type — before you commit a dollar.