A legal workflow is a defined sequence of tasks or steps that legal professionals follow to complete a specific legal process or procedure. These workflows can range from simple processes such as document creation and review to more complex procedures such as litigation management or compliance auditing. Legal workflows are designed to ensure consistency, accountability, and efficiency in legal operations by standardizing how tasks are performed. 

For example, a legal workflow for managing the lifecycle of a contract might include steps such as drafting the contract, internal reviews, negotiating terms, internal approvals with finance, sales, and IT teams, finalizing the agreement, and storing the executed and final document in a central repository. This workflow ensures that every contract follows the same process, reducing the risk of errors or missed steps.

A workflow for marketing policy management could involve drafting a new policy, obtaining feedback from relevant stakeholders, revising the policy based on feedback, obtaining final approval, and then communicating the policy to the organization. This ensures that policies are consistently reviewed, approved, and implemented.

Workflow automation for legal refers to the use of technology to streamline and automate routine tasks and processes within legal operations. This involves automating tasks such as document management, contract approvals, compliance monitoring, and other repetitive activities that traditionally require manual input. By implementing workflow automation, in-house legal teams can improve efficiency, reduce the risk of human error, ensure consistency in processes, and free up time for more strategic work.

In-house legal teams can leverage workflow automation in several areas, such as:

• Contract generation: Workflow automation can significantly streamline the contract generation process. It starts with document generation, where standardized templates are automatically filled with necessary details, such as the customer name and deal terms. Document automation then customizes the contract to meet specific transaction needs and deal desk rules, reducing manual edits and minimizing errors. Once generated, integrations with e-signature tools like DocuSign enable seamless digital execution. The contract is automatically sent to the relevant parties for approval and signature, with the workflow automation tool tracking the latest status in real-time. This end-to-end automation not only speeds up contract generation but also ensures efficient and compliant contract management from creation to execution.
• Contract approvals: Automating the contract approval process can significantly reduce the time spent on getting agreements finalized. Workflow automation can automatically route contracts to the appropriate departments for review, send reminders to approvers, and track the status of each contract, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.‍
• Legal hold management: When a legal hold is necessary, workflow automation can streamline the process by automatically sending out hold notices, tracking acknowledgments, and managing any follow-up actions required to ensure compliance.

The key benefits of legal automation for in-house legal teams include: 

1. Increased efficiency: Automation streamlines repetitive tasks, reducing the time spent on manual processes like document generation, contract approvals, and compliance monitoring.
2. Error reduction: By automating routine tasks according to preset steps, the risk of human error is minimized, leading to more accurate and consistent legal work.
3. Cost savings: Legal automation can reduce the need for additional resources, lowering operational costs by freeing up legal professionals to focus on higher-value tasks.
4. Improved compliance: Automated workflows help ensure that company policies are consistently applied, reducing the risk of non-compliance.
5. Faster turnaround times: Automated processes accelerate the completion of legal tasks, such as contract reviews and approvals, resulting in quicker decision-making and execution and revenue acceleration. 
6. Better resource management: Legal teams can allocate their time more effectively, focusing on high-value legal work rather than being bogged down by administrative or repetitive tasks.
7. Increased visibility and reporting: Automation provides real-time tracking and reporting capabilities, giving legal teams greater visibility into the status of tasks and processes, and enabling better decision-making.
8. Scalability: As an organization scales and legal request volumes grow, automated processes can easily scale up quickly  to handle increased workloads without the need for proportional increases in headcount. 
9. Enhanced client service: By reducing turnaround times and improving accuracy, legal automation allows in-house teams to provide better and more responsive service to internal clients. This improves the relationship and increases trust between business and legal teams.

Process automation focuses on automating specific, repetitive tasks, like automatically generating NDAs from templates, which reduces manual effort and ensures consistency. In contrast, workflow automation streamlines entire sequences of tasks, involving reviews and approvals from multiple steps and departments. For instance, automating the entire contract management process — from drafting to approval and final execution — ensures that each step is completed in the correct order by the right stakeholders, with no steps missed, minimizing delays and errors. In essence, process automation optimizes individual tasks, while workflow automation ensures that the whole process from start to finish runs efficiently.