By Berys Amor, Director of Technology at Corrs Chambers Westgarth

My first encounter with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was through an introduction in early 2018 to a Melbourne start-up (Ci-Gen) who were providing intelligent automation services to businesses in the Asia-Pacific region. While the banking and insurance sector had seen rapid interest and uptake of RPA, I didn’t really understand how it could be utilised in a law firm.

At the first meeting I asked the Ci-Gen directors to talk to me about some use cases that they had been involved in. They described how a large hotel chain were using software robots to analyse expenses overnight, looking for any anomalies or unusual expenses. The aim was to capture any incorrect or unusual charges immediately, to avoid any disputes or unhappy guests.

This example made me think about how we analysed timesheet entries on a daily basis – this…