RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
RPA in Legal & Compliance
Key Takeaways
- RPA automates contract registration, compliance screening and deadline monitoring to reduce manual risk.
- 24/7 robot checks improve accuracy, reduce missed renewals, and strengthen internal controls.
- Automating reconciliations and evidence capture speeds audits and preserves verifiable logs.
- Nocode RK Series enables legal teams to build secure, auditable automations without IT coding.
As business activities become more global and regulations grow more complex, the role of Legal and Compliance departments has become increasingly critical. Tasks such as contract review and management, compliance screening, and policy administration demand high accuracy and thoroughness, placing a significant burden on staff.
Automating these routine checks and administrative tasks with "RPA (Robotic Process Automation)" is an extremely effective way to reduce risks from human error and shift specialized talent to more strategic work.
This article outlines the challenges faced by Legal and Compliance departments, explains the benefits of RPA adoption, and presents concrete use cases. Discover how KEYENCE's RPA, the "RK Series," can contribute to strengthening your company's governance and operational efficiency.
Challenges in Legal & Compliance Departments
These departments, which support a company's healthy growth, are facing the following challenges:
Complex Contract Management
Manually registering and updating information from executed contracts—such as counterparty, term, and value—into a management ledger is time-consuming and prone to errors.
Time-Consuming Compliance Screening
When starting a new business relationship, a significant amount of time is spent searching for the counterparty's company name and executives across multiple databases and search engines.
Tracking Legal Changes and Assessing Impact
Constantly monitoring government websites to quickly identify relevant legal amendments and investigate their impact on internal regulations is a major burden.
Risky Management of Licenses and Permits
While renewal deadlines for necessary business licenses are managed in tools like Excel, the process often depends on a single person, creating a risk of missed renewals.
Heavy Workload for Audit Responses
Preparing for internal or external audits is time-consuming, as it involves searching for and gathering requested documents from various systems and folders.
Benefits of RPA Implementation
RPA enhances both the quality and efficiency of legal and compliance work.
- Improved Thoroughness and Accuracy of Checks: RPA performs checks 24/7 according to predefined procedures without fatigue. This eliminates human oversights and missed checks, dramatically improving the thoroughness and accuracy of the process.
- Reduced Compliance Risk: Automating and standardizing tasks like compliance screening and license deadline checks significantly reduces the risk of compliance violations caused by human error.
- Focus of Specialists on Core Duties: By delegating routine tasks to RPA, legal professionals can concentrate on strategic work that requires advanced expertise, such as contract negotiations, M&A, litigation support, and providing legal advice to business units.
- Strengthened Governance: Automating business processes with RPA leads to standardization. Furthermore, the RPA's operation log serves as an audit trail of "who, when, and what," contributing to stronger internal controls.
RPA Use Cases in Legal & Compliance
Even tasks requiring high accuracy can be safely automated with RPA.
| Task | Automation with RPA |
|---|---|
| Automated Contract Ledger Registration | RPA downloads executed contract PDFs and related information from an e-signature service, extracts the contract details, and automatically registers them in the contract management ledger (Excel or system). |
| Automated Compliance Screening | Based on a list of new business partners, RPA automatically searches their company and executive names across multiple designated databases and websites, saving screenshots of the results as evidence. |
| Monitoring for Legal Amendments | RPA periodically crawls government websites. If it finds information about a legal change matching specified keywords, it automatically notifies the relevant person via email with the URL and a summary. |
| License and Permit Renewal Reminders | RPA checks the license management ledger daily, extracts licenses with upcoming renewal deadlines, and automatically sends reminder emails to the responsible departments to initiate the renewal process. |
| Intellectual Property (Patent) Deadline Management | RPA accesses the patent office database (e.g., J-PlatPat), periodically checks the annuity payment deadlines for the company's patents, and notifies the IP department of any approaching deadlines. |
Why Choose KEYENCE's RK Series RPA?
KEYENCE's "RK Series" is the ideal choice for Legal and Compliance departments, where high reliability and control are paramount.
1. Ensures Internal Controls with Strict Access Management and Logs
Fine-grained permissions can be set for each user to create or execute scenarios. Additionally, a complete log of "who, when, which PC, and which robot" is recorded, preventing unauthorized use and serving as an audit trail.
2. Intuitive for Non-Experts to Use
Legal and compliance staff can automate their daily checks themselves. No programming knowledge is needed, allowing them to drive business improvements quickly without relying on external IT vendors.
3. Comprehensive Support from Start to Finish
From identifying tasks to automate, to creating security-conscious scenarios and ensuring stable operation, KEYENCE's dedicated specialists provide end-to-end support, allowing you to implement and use RPA with confidence.
For detailed materials or a consultation on legal and compliance applications, please feel free to contact us.
