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Hicksons Cuts Medical Advice Drafting Time from Forty Hours to Twenty Minutes with August
Joe Parker
Co-Founder
David Fischl
Partner, Hicksons
Elias Dehsabzi
Solicitor, Hicksons
Our journey began by considering how we could create greater opportunities for our lawyers, allowing them to spend more time on the tasks they found most engaging and rewarding. By identifying areas where technology could help streamline processes and amplify our team's strengths, we saw significant opportunities to increase both efficiency and effectiveness through the adoption of innovative legal tech.
We conducted an extensive global evaluation of legal tech solutions, attending two international conferences to comprehensively review and assess various tools. To ensure rigorous benchmarking, multiple vendors were tested using identical complex files, queries, and issues, with evaluations conducted side-by-side by our Digital Transformation Team alongside subject matter experts. By the conclusion of this process, it was clear we required a specialised legal-tech platform capable of accurately and efficiently pinpointing the critical details in our files - those unique "needles in a haystack" that only Hicksons' lawyers understand as essential and pertinent for our clients.
After this extensive assessment and in-depth discussions with the August team, it was evident that August stood out. The solution provided accuracy, configurability, and workflow automation capabilities. A large differentiator with August was that it specifically allowed us to include our specialised expertise directly into the platform, making it consistently accurate and tailored for our lawyers’ and clients’ needs.
"August will provide Hicksons with a competitive advantage in attracting the best lawyers in Australia. Life as a junior lawyer at Hicksons with August means you’ll grow and learn dramatically faster. Life as a senior lawyer or partner at Hicksons with August means you can solely focus on strategy and value to clients, with more time to mentor your team."
David Fischl
Partner, Hicksons
Another critical factor in choosing August was our need for seamless workflow integration. Previous experiences showed lawyers resisted solutions requiring manual uploads and repetitive questioning. August’s solution directly embeds fully-formatted Word documents into our existing workflows, enabling our lawyers to effortlessly access accurate and actionable information immediately within their usual workflow. This functionality, combined with tools such as the Assistant, provides the support our lawyers need to continue delivering outstanding legal services to our clients. Equally important was the August team's expertise and collaborative approach-they worked closely with us to make our vision a reality.
Gains in efficiency, volume, and delivering greater client value
Working closely together, Hicksons and August developed a powerful end-to-end solution capable of efficiently managing thousands of complex legal matters, each comprising tens of thousands of pages. August processes entire matter documents in a fraction of the traditional time, delivering comprehensive chronologies and detailed insights in fully-formatted Word documents, rather than simple chat responses. This capability ensures Hicksons’ clients receive faster, clearer, and more actionable legal advice, directly translating into measurable client value.
“August allows me to focus on the meaningful work that inspired me to become a lawyer. It has taken away the tedious, repetitive, and voluminous tasks that junior lawyers traditionally had to endure, freeing me to focus on learning to deliver strategic advice and developing trust and relationships with my clients.”
Elias Dehsabzi
Solicitor, Hicksons
What we think the future is with tools like August for law firms
We see significant opportunities to deliver greater value to our clients and elevate our legal services through the adoption of AI and digital transformation. As a mid-tier firm, our partners and Head of Digital Transformation, David Fischl, believe we can effectively leverage our size and agility to rapidly adopt innovative technologies like August. These tools not only enhance our service delivery and competitiveness among mid-tier firms, but also help narrow the gap with top-tier firms by offsetting their traditional resourcing advantage.
Our exceptional lawyers are now able to dedicate more time to strategic, high-value work-maximising their expertise and delivering even greater outcomes for our clients.
"Implementing August into our firm was like equipping each of our lawyers with an Iron Man suit. It has supercharged our services, allowing us to deliver increased value to our clients.
David Fischl
Partner, Hicksons
Now that we’ve developed expertise in using August, we foresee a shift in how we partner with our clients. Increasingly, we anticipate that clients will want to access this capability within their own organisations. This opens the door to a new model of collaboration - one that delivers our legal insight and capability at scale, without relying exclusively on traditional billing methods.
In short, August has helped us reconsider what legal service delivery can look like in Australia.
