At Buckles, innovation is at the heart of our legal services delivery. Our dedicated Innovation Committee – comprised of colleagues from our IT, project management, and legal teams – plays a central role in exploring and embedding new ideas across the firm. Drawing on a diverse mix of skills and perspectives, the committee identifies practical opportunities to improve how we work and how we serve our clients.
We combine deep legal expertise with forward-thinking technology and fresh approaches to problem-solving, ensuring our clients benefit from efficient, agile and cost-effective solutions. From AI-assisted research to bespoke digital tools, we continually invest in modernising the way legal work is done, without ever compromising on quality or rigour. Our commitment to innovation means we don’t just keep pace with change, we help shape it.
Exploring AI to Enhance Legal Work
AI and automation are playing an increasingly important role in the way legal services are delivered — not to replace lawyers, but to support them. At Buckles, we’re exploring a range of technologies that help our people work more efficiently, think more clearly, and focus on the work that matters most to our clients.
We’re currently piloting Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot – a generative AI tool designed to assist with tasks like drafting, summarising and organising information. Members of our Innovation Committee are testing Co-Pilot to evaluate where it can deliver the most value across legal and business support teams.
But our approach goes well beyond Co-Pilot. We also use AI-powered tools such as Luminance to assist with document review, contract analysis and risk identification. Platforms like HighQ help us collaborate more effectively with clients, automate workflows and manage matters with greater transparency. Meanwhile, BigHand Forms supports consistent and efficient document creation, freeing up time previously spent on repetitive admin.
Across all these tools, our goal is clear: to reduce friction, increase speed and improve accuracy, without compromising on quality, confidentiality or human judgment.
We’re taking a careful, ethical approach to adoption. That includes thorough reviews of data security, compliance, and usability, alongside real-world feedback from our teams. This is part of our broader commitment to innovation: using the right technology, in the right way, to deliver better outcomes for our clients and a better experience for our people.
Digital Mailroom – Transforming How We Handle Post
We’re also trialling a digital mailroom solution that uses Paper River technology to modernise how we receive, scan and distribute post across the firm. The goal is to reduce delays, streamline internal processes, and improve the security and accuracy of document handling.
Traditionally, incoming post has been processed manually, being opened, sorted, scanned, renamed, and filed by several different team members. This created delays, inconsistencies, and operational bottlenecks. With the new system, documents are scanned once at source, automatically routed to the correct team, and securely filed into our case management system.
The early benefits are clear:
- Faster turnaround – post is processed and delivered digitally to legal teams earlier in the day, helping matters progress more quickly.
- Improved accuracy – automation removes many of the manual steps that risk misfiling or duplication.
- Enhanced security and compliance – all documents are logged and tracked, ensuring better auditability, whilst reducing the risk of lost or misfiled information.
As part of this initiative, we’re also reviewing how mailroom operations could be centralised for the wider firm, building on successful models used across the legal sector.
The digital mailroom is a key step in our wider innovation and transformation programme, focused on creating smarter ways of working that allow our people to spend more time where it matters most: serving clients.
