Author: Onit

5 Ways to Make Sure Your Legal Matter Management Implementation is a Success 

Posted on October 25, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

So, you have carefully assessed your legal team’s challenges, mapped detailed requirements, completed a thorough assessment process, and selected your preferred matter management platform – now what next? Unfortunately, many legal teams stop here without properly thinking about how they will make the deployment and adoption of the new system a success. Bringing in a new matter management system takes time, money, and effort. Therefore, plans must be made to ensure that the new tool delivers the anticipated value and outcomes for your legal department and the broader organization.  

In the fourth and final part of our matter management blog series (read the first installments here: Part I, Part II, Part III), we explore five ways to ensure that your matter management implementation is a great success.  

1. Start Small, but Aim Big

This is less of a tangible step and more of a mindset. Many legal teams (energized by the selection process) get excited by the potential impact of a new legal matter management tool and want to roll it out as quickly and widely as possible. Other teams are immediately under pressure to prove their value to the organization – even if they are more cautious about the rollout. This leads to overambitious implementations that are almost doomed to failure before they begin. It’s great to have grand plans, but to succeed, it’s essential to build toward that success incrementally. For example, identify a small sub-team for the initial rollout or choose a larger group, limiting the initial deployed functionality. This allows you to put the necessary support in place, take feedback, measure impact, and learn valuable lessons before a broader rollout.

2. Bring Users on a Journey With You and Implement a Solid Training Program

While some users of a new matter management system may have been involved in the procurement process, many will not have been. You should not assume those users will understand the rationale for bringing in the new tool or be as enthused as the project team. One of the main reasons that new software implementations fail is down to end-user resistance or low adoption. Some put this down to people being stuck in their ways or technophobic, but often it is down to a lack of understanding and ‘buy-in’ on the part of the users. Therefore, make sure you explain to users why the new matter management system is being implemented, link it to their daily challenges, and showcase how it will benefit them personally. Users soon get on board when they realize a new tech tool will make their working life easier! Find more insights on how to secure legal technology adoption in this blog.

Another reason why user adoption of a new matter management system is often low has nothing to do with possible skepticism and resistance on – the part of users – it’s simply because users were not instructed on how to use the software. While many newer software platforms are built with an exceptional user experience and are intuitive, there is still a steep learning curve for any new software platform. It’s a simple fix! When looking for a new matter management system, ensure there is good user guidance and support built into the system, ensure you have coordinated thorough training for users, and build an associated knowledge base to deliver learning resources, keep users informed, and support new joiners. Ask your vendor to help support your training program, as any Customer-Success driven vendor will have pre-prepared materials and extensive experience onboarding other clients’ users. Also, consider seeking internal volunteers willing to champion the new system and provide support and training to new users.

3. Measure, Measure, Measure

Doubtless, part of the business plan when requesting a budget for a new matter management system included details about the value such a tool would bring to your team and organization. That value could have been in the shape of lower costs, increased revenues, reduced risk, etc. But once you implement a new system, how do you know if it delivers the desired impact? The answer is that you measure it. To measure the impact, you must see the status quo before implementing the tool. Therefore, make sure you have identified your baseline metrics before implementation. You might also consider them as your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For example, if you’re interested in measuring how a matter management system reduces average matter cycle times, then make sure you know what average cycle times were before implementing the tool. After this, you need to track the metric to monitor impact and trends over time. Read more about typical KPIs in legal departments in this article. These steps will help you avoid the ‘implement and hope’ trap many teams fall into.

You also want to make sure you have a functioning feedback loop. No technology implementation is perfect the first time. It’s a very rare thing indeed for software to be deployed seamlessly without any issues or subsequent enhancement requests. To see the full value of a new matter management system, listening to your users and adapting accordingly is critical. Therefore, when implementing a new system, ensure you have created a user feedback mechanism and communicated this accordingly. Seek as much feedback as possible, monitor trends, and share the results amongst leadership and your users. Transparency is key! Treat implementation as the first step in the journey of your new tool – seek to learn and aim for continuous improvement. As a legal operations software provider, we’ve observed this many times; you may find new value from the tool and out-delivering on your forecasted ROI.

4. Create New Roles to Help Drive Success

Legal technology has evolved considerably over the last decade. Read more on the evolution of matter management here. Legal departments are looking beyond the traditional document and contract management tools and are now embracing solutions to support intelligent workflows, contract analysis, document assembly, decision automation, etc. Many new-generation tools are highly configurable and can be crafted to solve challenges or optimize certain processes. This requires people with both the legal and technical knowledge to “engineer” these solutions.

Furthermore, as legal department tech stacks grow, there is a requirement to manage the different solutions, maintain relationships with vendors, look for synergies, engage with central IT departments and ensure the legal team is supported and enabled from a technology perspective. Therefore, when thinking about implementing a new matter management system, why not consider bringing in additional roles, such as legal engineers and legal technology managers, to ensure its success? Don’t think that only lawyers can pick this up – legal technology is now a vocation in its own right! Many legal teams, therefore, increasingly bring experts from alternative professional backgrounds to the table. Use this opportunity to make your legal team even more agile and diverse.

5. Support Your New Users

Upfront training for a new matter management system isn’t enough on its own – it is also critical to make ongoing support available to users so that any technical or usability issues can be addressed quickly to reduce friction. The minute a user runs into friction, they will likely switch off the new system. This friction may be caused by not understanding certain functionality, performance issues, or even bugs in the system. Whatever causes the friction, systems and processes should be in place for a user to report their issue and obtain help and guidance. It’s critical to agree from the outset who within your organization will support your new matter management system. The best practice is not to assume it will be IT – as they only have limited resources and adding a new tool to their list may not be easy. Therefore, ensure you discuss support adequately before implementing a new system and agree on responsibility and internal SLAs, e.g., what issues are supported, by whom, and when support is provided. Then make sure your users know what support is available and how they reach it. Many sophisticated vendors also offer a support area within their application. This can anticipate many issues from the outset and avoid frustration and a high workload for your internal colleagues. Ask about this when selecting a vendor. Also, consider monitoring support data to help identify common issues – this can help improve training and support processes.

Let’s Summarize…

Implementing a new legal matter management system takes work. It takes careful planning and involves putting in place processes and support to ensure everyone is enabled to see the total value of the new tool and ensure that value is continually delivered throughout the lifecycle of the matter management platform. Starting with these five key tips will undoubtedly help keep you focused during your matter management implementation journey.

This is the final entry in a four-part series. Read the prior installments here:
Part I: The Definition of a Legal Matter and its Management,
Part II: 7 Key Components of a Full-Suite Matter Management System,
Part III: 7 Aspects In-House Teams Should Consider When Choosing a Matter Management Vendor

7 Aspects In-House Teams Should Consider When Choosing a Matter Management Vendor 

Posted on October 25, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

This article is the third of our four-part blog series, focusing solely on matter management and its various aspects. If you have not yet read the first two articles, click here (Part I, Part II) to catch up. 

In part three, Carina Smolik-Fischer, director of product at BusyLamp (an Onit company) sums up 7 key aspects legal departments should consider when choosing the right matter management vendor. Here, you’ll get guidance on how to proceed once you have decided to purchase matter management software.

The decision has been made! You want to implement a matter management solution that makes your daily work more efficient, lets you work more effectively on matters, documents, legal intakes, and makes internal and external collaboration easier – congratulations on that! But now it’s time to ask yourself who is the right sparring partner for the job. Someone who assists you with scoping the project, supporting you with configuration, and onboarding your legal team to make this project a success. In my professional career, I gained profound experience with various matter management solutions. I found that some rules have proven true regarding finding the ideal matter management solution for a legal department. In the following, I would like to share the most valuable insights with you:

1. Your IT and Technology Matters

First and foremost, you must clarify with your IT and security department which requirements the new application must meet. IT will support you in checking if the matter management vendors meet important requirements like system provider and localization, data privacy, security, and certificates. BusyLamp meets a range of global certifications and regulatory and compliance standards, such as ISO 27001, GDPR, and more. Learn more about it here.

Next to the technical topics, support and provisions are vital, like license model, support model, updated deployment and maintenance, as well as integrations and quick implementation possibilities. Our data security checklist for in-house teams can help you keep the key IT considerations in mind.

And finally, costs and contract considerations like licenses and onboarding costs, contract duration, and payment terms are crucial. Our blog about hidden costs can help you to avoid underestimating the investment and to keep all costs in mind. This way, you can aim to select only the most suitable providers and shorten your vendors list.

2. Is the organization sustainable and scalable?

Besides the hard facts, soft skills should also drive your decision. When evaluating software vendors, take the time to dive into their backgrounds. Find out how long they have been active in the legal industry and whether they are currently growing or downsizing. Do they have a professional product and customer service team? Are they big enough and experienced enough to address your potential questions and concerns? Are they constantly developing the product and thus willing to grow with your future requirements? Make sure other customers are satisfied. Customer satisfaction is the best currency when predicting your project success.

3. Onboard your legal department early in the process

Get your legal department on board to drive user adoption. The project will only succeed if you have your colleagues by your side. This aspect should never be underestimated. We highly recommend you form a team with tech-savvy colleagues who represent your activities and know your department well. These can be lawyers, paralegals, assistants, and/or Legal Operations. Further recommendations on how to secure user adoption can be found within this blog article.

4. Request specific information from your potential matter management vendor

Let the team define its requirements. The best is using specific examples of their daily work and identifying what’s missing. Collect, classify and prioritize challenges and find intersection points. Which “pain points” are most relevant, which aspects are not so important, and which would be “nice to have”? Create a list and make it accessible to the team so that each team member feels included. Add key aspects your IT departments provide and collect all the data you need to make the right decision.

Once you have your list ready, share it with the potential providers and ask them to fill in their details. Use this sheet as preparation for the software presentation meeting.

5. Schedule Software Preparations and Work on a Practical Example

Once the day arrives, and you have invited vendors for the software presentation, it’s time to get down to business. Invite your team (the devil is in the details) and prepare your requirements list. Also, consider inviting a key user from the IT department to clarify all potential IT questions.

Take the chance and ask all the questions you and your team have. Ask the presenter to run through a specific use case completely. Make sure that the whole flow can be mapped within the application. That way, you will receive a realistic idea of whether the software suits your needs.

6. Ask for a Test Drive

Before committing to a new software solution, be sure to kick the tires. Most vendors offer a free trial to test features, benefits, and usability. Make sure the software contains the features you need, as well as the functionality. Use this critical phase to examine the software and put the provider through its paces. This is the only way for you to find out if it is a perfect match.

7. “It Takes Two to Tango”

At the end of the day, the relationship with the software solution representative is very important for mutual success. There must be clear communication and trust on both sides. Make use of a reliable and experienced single point of contact. You and your team spend plenty of effort defining your legal department’s goals and requirements, so it’s important that you don’t rush the last phase of your evaluation process and choose the most suitable matter management vendor wisely.

Read Part IV: 5 Ways to Make Sure Your Matter Management Implementation is a Success. 

7 Key Components of a Full-Suite Matter Management System 

Posted on October 25, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

This article is the second of our four-part blog series focusing solely on matter management and various aspects. If you have not yet read the first article, click here to catch up. In part two, we will focus on the question of how full-suite digital matter management platforms help to optimize and streamline the management of legal matters.

In short, the answer is simple: If we take the core components of a matter, then we can easily deduce the benefits and efficiencies that matter management systems provide for legal departments. This boils down to: 

1. Central and Secure Document Management 

Matter management systems centralize document storage for matters and provide a secure location where important matter documents can be accessed. Essential document management functionality is normally present, including versioning, redlining, custom metadata, tagging, granular permissioning, etc. Integrations with MS Office and Google Workspace are often available, making editing and collaborating on documents quick and easy. Matter management tools also make it simple for documents and their content to be searched and found. Some matter management systems also offer specific contract management capabilities, such as e-signature integration and clause extraction for contract-related matters.

2. Discoverable Know-How

One benefit of managing matters in a single system is that all matter-related information and knowledge is collated in one location, a single source of truth. It also gives structure and taxonomy to that data. Good matter management systems harness this data and make know-how searchable and easily available in context when needed. Some matter management systems are actually utilizing AI to simplify and support knowledge delivery, connect data, help keep it up to date, and put it into context. Some matter management platforms leverage integrations with other systems to centralize data and make multiple sources searchable; others also embed chatbots and decision automation tools to deliver answers to specific questions and circumstances rather than just search results.

3. Efficient Communication and Collaboration

Following the pandemic and the rise in remote working, the best matter management platforms will now integrate with market-leading collaboration tools such as MS Teams. Good matter management platforms will also be systems of engagement (not just systems of record), enabling users from both within and outside the organization to collaborate on the delivery of matters. This is particularly helpful when legal teams are working with outside counsel. Communication should also be possible within the matter management platform, with social collaboration functionality like messaging, comments, and sharing. We are seeing a trend towards the “meet users where they work” model, so expect to see matter management tools integrating with more personal productivity and collaboration tools in the future.

4. Automated Workflows and Self-Service

Automating standardized workflows and reducing manual intervention is the key to making any legal process more efficient. Therefore, matter management platforms often provide workflow automation functionality. Process automation can range from standardized and fixed to fully configurable (often known as no-code automation). It can be used to optimize a wide range of matter processes, including notifications, legal intake, document automation, approval processes, risk escalation mechanisms, and contract lifecycles, to name just a few. One key benefit of automation is that it unlocks greater self-service. Legal teams are busy enough, so the more they can enable others to help themselves, the more they can focus on higher-value work. Matter management platforms are therefore being used to enable stakeholders within the business to instruct the legal team, generate their own documents, and access relevant guidance and know-how.

5. Clear Organization of Work

Delivering a legal matter involves the intricate coordination and management of resources, status, and risk to ensure delivery of the matter on time and on budget. Matter management systems often include tools to help with planning, resource allocation, and scheduling. From task management, work allocation, and project plans to capacity trackers, team calendars, and timelines – matter management tools help map the work necessary for the delivery of the legal matter and support the management of the resource to ensure proper execution of that matter. In some cases, matter management platforms will also include time-tracking features to enable legal teams to record the time they spend working on matters. However, project management isn’t just about resources, it’s about monitoring status changes, tracking risk, and ensuring transparent reporting. Matter management tools, therefore, provide tools that ensure complete transparency over matter activity. 

6. Transparent Spend Management

While many matters are dealt with in-house, a large proportion still require the support and input of outside counsel. Full-suite matter management tools often provide the functionality to help source legal service providers, create budgets, track spend, review invoices, enforce billing guidelines and run approval processes. Since spend is such a large element of any legal matter, it makes sense for spend management to form part of broader matter management systems – after all, it’s possible to derive more valuable insight when spend data is layered against other matter data. For example, comparing a law firm’s spend with its cycle times and outcomes can help determine whether a legal department sees value in its legal service providers.

7. Access to Data

The more matter activity conducted within matter management systems, the more useful data they hold. Whether the data relates to spend, status, resourcing, contracts, risk, or legal intake – it’s important to ensure that the data can be properly accessed and interrogated and that insights can be delivered quickly. Many matter management systems provide sophisticated reporting and analysis tools that enable matter data to be filtered and extracted. Alternatively, data can be visualized in charts and graphs within reporting dashboards or via connectors with tools such as Power BI. It’s important to note that many matter management systems go beyond simple reporting and now use data to predict future outcomes and spot trends. 

Putting it Into Practice

Matter management is a broad discipline that involves the efficient coordination and delivery of all aspects of a legal matter. Optimizing the matter management process is critical in the current landscape but may seem daunting given the scope of many legal matters; however, there are significant gains to be made by deploying technology solutions to streamline and support the management of legal matters. Instead of trying to stitch together different tech tools, look for full-suite matter management platforms that can enhance the entire matter lifecycle. These tools will help you start small but will provide the foundation for your team to scale into an organized, productive, and informed legal function! 

Read Part III of this series: 7 Aspects In-House Teams Should Consider When Choosing a Matter Management Vendor. 

The Definition of a Legal Matter and its Management

Posted on October 25, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

This article is the first of our four-part blog series focusing solely on matter management and its various aspects and best practices. To kick off the series, we will be going back to the basics. In this article, we look at what matter management and legal matters are and why digital matter management is rising in importance.

Matter management is a term that is regularly used within the legal industry. It’s what lawyers and legal operations professionals want to optimize, and it’s the challenge that legal tech vendors are trying to solve. However, its scope is so broad that it’s easy to get confused as to what “matter management” is. To help address any uncertainty, we thought that we’d share our thoughts on the subject and set out what we believe matter management means and how technology can play a part. 

Starting With the 7 Core Components of a Legal Matter 

While matter management has received more attention with the growth in legal tools aimed at streamlining the process, it’s important to note that matter management is a discipline that has been around much longer than any software tool.  

As the name suggests, matter management is the process of managing a legal matter (with or without technology). But what does this entail? To explain, it’s easiest to first look at the constituent elements of a legal matter.

1. Documents

Think of lawyers, and you’ll often conjure up images of huge contracts and files full to the brim with documents. Every legal matter involves documentation of some description, from contracts and licenses to emails and letters. All this documentation needs to be centrally and securely stored and managed.

2. Knowledge

While legal teams are smart people, it’s perfectly natural they cannot have all the answers. They need quick access to quality and accurate data and know-how to support the delivery of any legal matter. Making this knowledge accessible when it is needed is a core component of matter management.

3. Collaboration

Law is a team sport. Every legal matter involves a broad range of different stakeholders – within the legal department and the wider business, as well as external to the organization. Efficient matter management requires seamless communication and collaboration between all parties.

4. Workflow

While many legal matters are complex and have their own nuances, most legal matters are quite formulaic. In other words, they follow a set sequence of phases and stages depending on the facts and circumstances of the matter.

5. Management

Matters are projects, so they need to be managed with the same diligence and attention. From scope, budgeting, and resourcing to task allocation, risk tracking, and status reporting, matters need to be carefully managed like any other project to ensure delivery on time and within budget.

6. Spend

Tracking spend against budget is a key component any matter where outside counsel or other legal service provider is instructed. It’s always vital to monitor how matter spend is performing against budget, keep track of work-in-progress (WIP) and accruals, as well as look out for issues that might adversely impact the budget and matter spend.

7. Reporting

In order to properly manage any legal matter or portfolio of matters, it’s necessary to have access to all the information about the relevant matters. Whether it’s information about status, risk, resourcing, spend, contracts, matters, etc., this information needs to be collated, available, and capable of being easily reportable. 

Matter management simply involves the efficient coordination, organization, and delivery of all these core components for legal matters. 

Micro vs Macro Matter Management 

When people think of matter management, they are usually thinking about it at matter (micro) level, e.g., the management of a single matter. This will normally be the case for participants in particular matters who need visibility over matter activity and have access to matter-related documents and know-how. However, legal departments are constantly handling large numbers of ongoing matters that also need to be managed and tracked at a portfolio (macro) level. This will particularly be the case for General Counsel, CLOs, and legal operations managers who need visibility, reporting, and insight across all legal matters. Therefore, it’s important to remember that matter management also includes matter portfolio management. 

The Rise of Digital Matter Management 

Unsurprisingly, digital matter management (DMM) involves the use of technology to support the management and delivery of legal matters. There are many software tools available that will help improve the discreet elements of a legal matter listed above, from contract assembly and document management systems to spend management and enterprise collaboration applications. Whilst it’s a basic approach, even the use of tools like MS Excel and Dropbox is a form of digital matter management that works for many legal teams. 

Currently, there is no shortage of software point solutions to help manage and streamline different components of a legal matter. However, the use of separate tech tools presents its own challenges – for example, integration difficulties, data silos, and inefficiency caused by context switching across applications. Legal departments are also under pressure from their organization’s IT teams to simplify and reduce the tech stack. For these reasons, there is a growing trend away from point solutions for matter management and towards single platforms that aim to optimize the full matter lifecycle in one central system. Therefore, in recent years, legal departments have been increasingly adopting full-suite cloud platforms. 

What is Driving the Focus on Digital Matter Management?  

Optimizing matter management has become a key focus for many legal teams in recent years, and they’re turning to technology to support this initiative. It’s part of a rapid digital transformation trend across legal departments that is being driven by a range of different factors, including, but not limited to: 

  • Move to remote working, which requires greater focus and investment in legal productivity and workflow tools and easy access to know-how from anywhere and at any time 
  • Pressure to be more cost-efficient as a legal function and deliver more value to their organizations 
  • Growing global regulation and uncertainty causing increased legal workloads 
  • More work being serviced in-house without legal department headcounts increasing significantly 
  • Need to improve internal customer engagement as well as vendor selection and management 
  • Maturing of legal operations and rise in dedicated legal technology strategies for corporate legal departments 
  • Need for legal departments to demonstrate that they are a net contributor to the business

All these factors are leading many legal departments to seriously explore the adoption of matter management platforms to alleviate these pressures and help boost the value that they are delivering to their businesses.

Read Part II of this series: 7 Key Components of a Full-Suite Matter Management System.

Onit Employees Support Ukraine War Charity Effort 

Posted on October 25, 2022 by - Company News and Events

Several Onit employees took time out of their calendars last week to help organize medical supplies for the war in Ukraine. The group — featuring members from Onit’s research and development, professional services, and administrative departments — volunteered at Medical Bridges in Houston. Medical Bridges is a nonprofit organization that collects medical donations from around the United States for distribution to healthcare workers worldwide. 

Onit donated $50,000 to Medical Bridges, sponsoring two crates full of critical medical supplies — everything from bandages and field trauma blankets to boot covers, hairnets, and gloves — to aid healthcare workers on the ground in Ukraine. Five Onit employees spent three hours sorting and boxing the crates at the Medical Bridges warehouse on Magnet Street in Houston. The team returned to the site this week to help assist with final shipment of the materials.

Sorting the supplies at Medical Bridges. From left to right: Joseph Jefferson, Jana Barlow, David Goldfarb, Meredith Page, and Abhi Rao of Onit.

For the volunteers, the effort hit home; AXDRAFT, one of the businesses in Onit’s family of companies, is headquartered in Ukraine.  

“The team in Ukraine is amazing,” Meredith Page, office manager and one of the volunteers, said. “They’re so positive and optimistic, even with everything happening over there. They’re really good people, and we’re proud to do anything we can to help out.” 

The final shipment ready to go. From left to right: Walter Ulrich, CEO of Medical Bridges; Trevonna Hendrix, Director of Global Health at Medical Bridges; Meredith Page, Tiffany Nguyen, and Nick Whitehouse of Onit.

“Donating to Medical Bridges is an honor, and we look forward to partnering with the organization again in the future to help care for those in need around the world,” Onit Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Eric Elfman said. 

ABOUT MEDICAL BRIDGES 

Medical Bridges is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to procuring medical and surgical supplies and equipment for donation to qualified providers of charitable medical care in developing countries. Medical Bridges was established in 1997 in Houston, TX. 

For more information on Medical Bridges, visit https://www.medicalbridges.org.  

Harnessing the Power of Data: 3 Reasons It Is Imperative for Increasing Legal Ops’ ROI

Posted on October 14, 2022 by - Legal Operations

Data analysis is crucial to understanding market trends and your business. Here are the keys to why legal leaders must capitalize on critical data to increase visibility, improve forecasting, and create continuous competitive advantage — ultimately transforming Legal from a cost center to a strategic, materially impactful powerhouse.

Data, it has often been said, is the new oil as it is a commodity of immense worth. It is a resource that must be protected, and if left unrefined, it holds no true value. But when mined, data can illuminate our lives, our businesses, and our world.

In the third and final chapter of the Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report, the multinational study* showcases the untapped potential of legal operations to be a change agent in driving meaningful business results. While the report determined that eight in ten (79%) enterprise employees do not see Legal as a modern operation, it also uncovered that technology acts as a catalyst for evolution for businesses and practitioners who wish to differentiate and grow.

Data can be like oil. Yet unlike oil, data has the potential to be infinite, shared to every corner of the planet literally at the speed of light. And, far from crude, data is a sophisticated tool available to everyone in the form of transformative digitalized technology, like artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics solutions, and business process automation (BPA).

Why data matters for Legal

Traditionally, Legal has not been required to quantify key performance indicators (KPIs) and return on investment (ROI) with the same rigor as other functional groups. However, the ELR Report revealed that two in three (64%) legal respondents are unable to track all outside counsel spend — and one in 25 (4%) cannot track it at all. In fact, the average department can track just three-fifths (60%) of outside spend at most; in Germany, this figure rises to two-thirds (66%), and in the United States and United Kingdom, it drops to less than half (53%).

Now is the time for Legal to become a true business driver. But to create greater operational wins, accelerate revenue acquisition, and function in an efficient and modern capacity that demonstrates market intelligence, Legal must develop transparent quantitative metrics and report regularly, just like Sales may conduct weekly pipeline calls or Finance faces quarterly reviews. Legal must quantify its performance – and that requires its own systems of record that capitalize on critical data to increase visibility, improve forecasting, and assist in decision-making.

Here are three essential ways harnessing data can assist in your legal department’s evolution:

1. Data optimizes wiser cost containment.

The ability to maintain and monitor total visibility of your legal spend data in real time — and to make changes instantly and agilely, based on ever-changing industry trends — is vital, principally in our current macroeconomic climate.

Benchmarking cannot reel in inflation, but integrating state-of-the-art matter and rate benchmarking solutions can identify waste and streamline budgeting and rate reviews. Although less than one in two (48%) legal professionals use e-billing and spend optimization solutions at this time, data solutions that track specific, high-level metrics can calculate projected savings automatically — and the insights gleaned can provide not only a complete overview of financial data now, but also ensure upcoming hiring decisions and forecast spend are cost-efficient.

2. Data solidifies partnerships, today and tomorrow.

Every business is, first and foremost, a collection of people. Without inherently human vision, ingenuity, and expertise, there could be no corporate success.

The ELR Report showed that four in five (80%) of employees believe Legal excels at procuring vendors and services. Analyzing data via business intelligence software takes this to the next level, creating “big picture” awareness for comparison of partners — juxtaposed against each other, as well as collated with wider legal industry data — in order to establish performance evaluation standards and highlight areas requiring change. That way, Legal can initiate more honest, fact-based conversations about what it needs to strengthen collaboration, productivity, and growth moving forward.

3. Data can uncover a gold mine of revenue leakage.

Though critical for risk mitigation, contracts tend to be overwhelmingly time-consuming. According to the ELR Report, most legal respondents spend at least half their time (4 to 5 hours each day!) reviewing and managing contracts. But AI-powered contract lifecycle management (CLM) can redline a contract in under two minutes, automatically escalating issues if needed.

While only half (54%) of legal professionals say their contract processes are currently automated, by exploring all data avenues — and molding data into actionable information — Legal will find themselves with more free time to do the type of high-level, client-based, and intellectual work that matters most to businesses: extracting novel opportunities for material growth via innovation and competitive differentiation.

Legal in the spotlight

Simply put, one cannot effectively manage what one does not measure. Data might be perceived as “the new oil” in various ways, but one vast difference emerges in particular: Oil is a limited asset, whereas the more data is utilized, the more advantageous it can become.

Knowing how to harness data can elevate Legal’s value throughout the enterprise, bolstering the department’s brand image as a business partner and corporate rainmaker. Unleashing insights and actions derived from that data builds a lasting foundation, predicting paths for what lies ahead: Legal making its mark materially across every aspect of business, from topline revenue generation to bottom-line cost and operational efficiencies, with an eye firmly on the future.

Read the ELR Report to learn more about how legal professionals view their relationships with internal clients in comparison to the image enterprise employees have of their legal departments and how Legal can evolve to prove material impact and improve efficiencies across the business.

*The ELR Report is a third-party, multinational study of 4,000 enterprise employees and 500 corporate legal professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany intended to showcase relationship dynamics and perceived image between corporate legal teams and enterprise organizations.

Business First, Practitioner Second: 3 Keys to Improving Legal Ops’ Speed and Spend

Posted on October 7, 2022 by - Legal Operations

With the world in constant flux and macroeconomic trends influencing companies to increase scrutiny on operational and cost efficiency, a dual challenge has been created for Legal. Here’s why both speed and spend matter – and what you can do to execute gains in efficiency, revenue generation, and transformation across the enterprise

As President Harry S. Truman once famously said, “The buck stops here.”

The nature of accountability has long been considered an essential component of leadership. Taking ownership of the choices we make emboldens transparency and empowers collaboration — which, in turn, elevates trust and enhances productivity. Accountability is also a proven baseline for measuring legal operations’ impact on its business.

In the third and final chapter of the Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report, the multinational study* spotlights the unlimited potential of legal operations to be a transformative agent in driving meaningful business results with technology.

But while internal clients are most concerned with Legal’s operational efficiency, such as responsiveness, speed of execution and resolution, the ELR Report revealed that executive leadership and C-suite members concentrate most on cost efficiency. And with a 2022 priority initiative on the reevaluation of outside counsel providers and spend, nearly two in five (37%) legal respondents say chief financial officers (CFOs) hold Legal accountable for outside counsel spend, as well as legal expenses in general. While this is hardly surprising, what is eye-opening is that accountability is not necessarily tied to the CFO, CEO, or even internal management teams: One in 10 (11%) say it is their board that also holds Legal accountable for spend.

The price of accountability

In many companies, general counsel (GC) and even chief legal officers (CLOs) do not have a seat at the boardroom table. So to execute gains in efficiency, cost-justify, and demonstrate the value of its operations and impact on business, Legal must share accountability and collaborate more strategically.

Three in four (75%) U.S. and nearly seven in 10 (68%) German respondents feel their departments are cost-efficient, whereas just half (52%) in France and less than half (44%) in the United Kingdom do. With many enterprises holding operations in more than one nation, this variability can be startling, leading to questions about operational management and cost structures.

The bottom line is that the legal departments that not only track legal spend but drive the best possible commercial bargain with outside counsel are the ones who show the greatest market intelligence and who will accelerate their own bottom-line efficiency, as well as topline revenue recognition.

3 Keys to Improving Legal Ops’ Speed and Spend

1. Acknowledge the periodic hidden factory.

Sometimes Legal can be perceived as a hidden factory – a concept coined by statistician Armand Vallin Feigenbaum referring to the potential of a department, activity, or process to create roadblocks and work against efficiency.

It has never been Legal’s intention to put the brakes on business. However, for Legal, the devil is in the details; that is literally Legal’s job as protector of the business to deliberate over contracts and deals with a fine-toothed comb of compliance and risk mitigation. Add to this that the average legal ops professional is required to support 23 other employees, according to the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). But contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions that offer self-service portals to automate contract review can not only shrink sales cycles by 24%, but also give Legal back 30% of their time.

2. Evolve your legal spend management strategy.

In an ever-changing macroeconomic market, “unexpected” budget changes can become the norm — so being proactive when it comes to managing spend, rather than reactive, is crucial. Modern legal operations can catapult efficiency on every level, however, by creating systems to track spend and identify opportunities to sustainably control outside legal counsel.

Utilizing a cloud-based platform and centralized database with spend management solutions will permit legal ops professionals and GCs to gain oversight of matters and spend as well as optimize costs, manage vendor performance, and save up to 26% on accrual or unbilled estimates for work in progress.

3. Invest in a silver bullet.

Today’s climate of instant gratification can lead to clients, both internal and external, expecting (even demanding) both accountability and speed. While it could be advantageous to introduce an intuitive timekeeping solution to monitor how much time is spent on various legal tasks, operational efficiency doesn’t always require the same level of formal tracking that cost efficiency does.

When it comes to matters of spend, though, it is imperative. Yet less than half (48%) of legal respondents worldwide currently utilize AI-integrated e-billing solutions — even though implementing software to expedite invoicing and replace paper billing is proven to not only improve revenue flow, but to also mitigate unauthorized charges and surprise fees, contributing to 8.4% annually in legal spend savings.

Putting the business first

Legal need not be a cog that slows the wheel of the enterprise. In fact, with a dual focus on speed and spend, Legal can drive efficiencies, control costs, and demonstrate it understands specific business needs to achieve success, now and moving future-forward.

By improving operational and cost efficiency, Legal will also contribute to faster revenue generation, competitive differentiation, margin control, and corporate change — delivering value and operational wins that materially impact its businesses in innovative, game-changing ways.

Read the ELR Report to learn more about how legal professionals view their relationships with internal clients in comparison to the image enterprise employees have of their legal departments and how Legal can evolve to prove material impact and improve efficiencies across the business.

*The ELR Report is a third-party, multinational study of 4,000 enterprise employees and 500 corporate legal professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany intended to showcase relationship dynamics and perceived image between corporate legal teams and enterprise organizations.

Technology as a Catalyst for Evolution: 4 Steps to Right-Sizing Legal Ops Solutions

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

State-of-the-art tech is a game-changing enabler for businesses that wish to differentiate, grow, and succeed. Here’s how departments can be sure they are embracing the features they need – and not overspending on ones they don’t – to elevate efficiency, ignite revenue, and evolve for the future.

No word on exactly what career he grew up to have, but as the iconic Ferris Bueller once said: “Life moves pretty fast.” These days, the speed of business moves faster than ever – seemingly at the speed of light when fused with modern technology.

In the newly released third and final chapter of the Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report, the multinational study* spotlights the unlimited potential of legal operations to be a transformative agent in driving meaningful business results by positively influencing revenue generation and operational and cost efficiencies with technology.

A “by the book” department dependent on precedents, Legal has, admittedly, never been exactly a trailblazer when it comes to tech: Nearly half of legal professionals (44%) call their department “averse to change.” But businesses that invest in technology surpass others in the best of times and remain a step ahead during times of disruption – and those who adapt to the latest solutions are bound to surpass and replace those who do not.

A need for modernization

To function in a modern and efficient capacity, Legal requires its own systems of record and engagement, just as every other function has. However, the ELR Report revealed that many legal teams lack the automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to advance both machine learning (ML) and human decision-making. In fact, almost half (46%) of legal respondents acknowledge they do not utilize automated systems for managing contracts.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital modernization, of course. But here are four essential steps every department must consider when adopting new tech to right-size its solutions:

1. Look at the big picture.

Whether your business has a technology roadmap in place or not, it is crucial to audit your current offerings. Gauge the functionality of legacy systems and vendors, pinpoint which are outdated, and ask: What do we have that we don’t need? What do we need that we don’t have? 

Another criterion to consider in a post-pandemic landscape where both cultural flexibility and remote work are paramount is: Is a tangible version of this required, or can this be streamlined and moved to the cloud?

2. Choose a single collaborative system.

No single technology can be all things to all people, but platforms that integrate workflows and offer communication skyrocket efficiency – which is highly necessary when nearly two-thirds of enterprise employees (59%) feel legal departments can sometimes be inefficient and 44% believe Legal can improve its effect on deal closures and revenue generation.

Enter enterprise legal management (ELM) to provide workflow clarity, track spend, and reinforce collaboration. Although less than half (48%) of respondents currently utilize e-billing and spend optimization solutions powered by AI, introducing a single source of truth that “speaks the same language” as it captures transactions, matters, and projects will help every function work smarter, not harder.

3. Don’t get distracted by bells and whistles.

Although most departments do want to get up to speed – 46% agree Legal must do better at accepting technological innovation – there is no tech Fairy that can provide the perfect “glass slipper” transformation. So it’s especially important to avoid “shiny object syndrome,” or the tendency to choose flashy features with the promise of an instantaneous tech happily-ever-after.

To prevent shiny object syndrome, compose a features list with two columns: “Must-Have” and “Nice-to-Have.” Keep in mind that overall capability, resources, and fit are critical, as is corporate culture – less than three in 10 ELR respondents (28%) describe themselves as early adopters by nature, and one in four (25%) says they lack the time to learn a new system. Selecting a dedicated team to oversee the rollout and set aside designated training periods can orchestrate a smooth deployment.

4. Focus on what automation can (and cannot) do.

When workloads increase but headcounts do not, the only typical answers used to be longer in-house hours or hiring outside counsel – and either one can be costly, taxing talented teams, budget, or both. Advances in intelligent automation, ML, and natural language processing (NLP) now offer a novel alternative.

While the concept of automation is rife with the stereotype it will replace real employees, this could not be further from the truth. The newest contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions automate contract review and administer data required to identify revenue recognition and acceleration opportunities, giving attorneys up to 30% of their time back for decidedly human pursuits: delivering in-depth, personal client device; focusing on the innovation and negotiations that impact and protect research and development (R&D), mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and intellectual property; and devising new cultural initiatives that bring meaningful change. And when it comes CLM, return on investment (ROI) is real: sales cycles are reduced by 24% and overall legal spend slashed by 50%.

What lies ahead

Technology takes the vision, insight, and knowledge of a business and shuttles it through the enterprise so that it lands where it will produce the greatest effect. But investing in tech is merely step one: Ensuring it is embraced is the real key to elevating operational and cost efficiency.

By deploying new technology, Legal has the uniquely positive chance to cash in on its influence as a trusted advisor, authority figure, and true business partner. And with right-sized solutions, every department can evolve into a more materially impactful, future-proof function for the ever-transforming worlds of business and law.

Read the ELR Report to learn more about how legal professionals view their relationships with internal clients in comparison to the image enterprise employees have of their legal departments and how Legal can evolve to prove material impact and improve efficiencies across the business.

*The ELR Report is a third-party, multinational study of 4,000 enterprise employees and 500 corporate legal professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany intended to showcase relationship dynamics and perceived image between corporate legal teams and enterprise organizations.

The Merging of Art and Science Through the Evolution of CLM — Part Two

Posted on September 8, 2022 by - Contract Lifecycle Management

This article by Charmel Rhyne was first published on Law.com. 

The final part of this series on CLM’s growth examines how first- and next-generation solutions have evolved can help with selecting the right type of contract management tool. Part one outlined the distinction between contract management and contract lifecycle management and discussed the challenges solved by first-generation CLM platforms and what drives their continued evolution.

By the end of the 2010s, first-generation contract lifecycle management was starting to look very much like a comprehensive end-to-end solution close to enterprise maturity. But these offerings were still costly and expensive. Legal departments began to recognize the importance of taking CLM up a notch with factors like rightsizing, perfecting both buy-side and sell-side solutions, and implementing AI-driven CLM solutions. With those drivers in mind, next-generation CLM was just around the corner.

Brainstorming Next Generation CLM

Software developers have recently been diverging into two general branches of next-generation CLM. One is designed to handle all kinds of contracts—buy-side, sell-side, and otherwise. The second is for only buy-side contracts and primarily included with source-to-contract software packages. Interestingly, statistics show that organizations with either type of solution have been doing well with their CLM implementations of contract repositories and contract reports and analysis, but there is still room for improvement for other processes, particularly when managing all contracts.

Rightsizing is a crucial factor to consider when choosing the most appropriate CLM solution. All too often, a legal department will do due diligence and spend a lot of time deliberating, only to implement a solution that does not meet all its growth requirements or is more than what is needed. By choosing a rightsized CLM solution, you can’t go wrong. For example, by having the ability to configure and deploy the processes you need when you need them, you can enhance existing solutions and add new departments as your company evolves.

AI and machine learning are other areas of innovation taking CLM by storm. When pre-signature and post-signature AI contract solutions are built on an intelligent platform, machine learning and natural language processing come together to empower the organization with a solution that reads, writes, and reasons like a lawyer. Most CLM vendors have focused on the extraction of key terms/clauses, while very few have taken the much harder approach to automate redlining.

Connecting legal to the whole enterprise is another lofty goal, as legal departments often operate in a silo. While it’s no secret they are well-positioned to operationalize internal efficiencies, by investing in relationships with other departments, legal can have a significant impact on the enterprise at large. What does this have to do with contracting? Managing all the necessary steps in your contract process is hard enough internally across several departments. The complexity of managing contracts increases exponentially when you are overseeing them across several office locations, time zones, or languages. The ability to have everything centrally located with changes tracked in real-time becomes critical.

What About the Future of CLM?

One current school of thought says ERP and CRM vendors will expand in the CLM arena, forcing CLM out of its present niche. This is unlikely since ERP and CRM are transaction-driven and CLM merges art and science. The science here is clearly process automation, but what is the art?

A key factor in the future of CLM is the standardization of legal terms—the practice of law is the art. The art is in the negotiation and the exact, precise wording of what’s in the contract. Simplification of standard terms and conditions in contracts would make negotiations easier and less costly—think of how legal invoicing standards were finessed with the establishment of the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES). Even though some modern solutions allow users to set conditional rules for the review of nonstandard terms, the problem remains that we need more standard terms across the board. The merging of art and science in contracting will be something to watch for in the coming years.

The bottom line is next-generation CLM solutions and other legal tech innovations are driving the industry toward even more intriguing and uncharted territory, and it’s up to all of us to help it get there.

Future-proofing Legal: 4 Ways AI Drives the Business of Law Forward

Posted on September 7, 2022 by - Legal Operations

The potential for legal departments to positively impact every aspect of business, from revenue growth to operational efficiency to corporate innovation, has been uncovered – and artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are proving to be Legal’s catalysts for evolution.

“Siri, remind me to make that call at 3 pm.”

“Alexa, play ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’”

From the fingerprint and facial recognition that unlocks your phone to the live chat inquiring when your latest online order or rideshare will arrive, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have become sidekicks in the beautiful chaos of modern life – even in legal operations.

Corporate legal departments have, historically, been a little late to the digital transformation party. However, chapter two of the Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report, a multinational study spotlighting how legal professionals perceive their interactions with internal clients, reveals that half of legal respondents voice an urgent need for modernization, deeming their technology both insufficient (47%) and outdated (46%). This technology lag is particularly prevalent in France, where nearly three in five (58%) desire an upgrade.

Some global legal departments do have a running head start integrating AI to manage contracts (51%), matter management initiatives (51%), and eBilling and spend (48%). But what is holding back the rest of Legal from evolving into a more service-minded, modernized, “work smarter, not harder” function?

According to Legal respondents, the department admittedly can be averse to change (44%). One in four respondents (25%) says they simply do not have time to learn new technology. Other obstacles include a lack of budget (39%) and the disenfranchising belief among two in three legal practitioners (67%) who feel executives are unsupportive in endorsing modernization.

But for legal departments continually expected to do more with less, modern tech can define a new era of operational and cost efficiency, especially in a macroeconomic market featuring inflationary risk, rising interest rates, and geopolitical conflict. Bringing automation to legal operations minimizes risk while boosting productivity, streamlining workflows, and freeing up time for legal teams to focus on business-critical tasks of higher value, complexity, and billability.

Legal can leverage AI and automation to help drive efficiency and material growth by:

1. Improving invoice accuracy.One of the most effective ways to manage outside counsel is to develop and maintain billing guidelines. While only 48% of ELR respondents currently utilize eBilling, an AI-powered system can simplify the billing of productive invoiceable hours and improve accuracy, flagging common errors and enforcing guidelines that might otherwise disrupt budgets – and contributing to up to 10% savings in outside counsel spend.

2. Accelerating contract workflows. About half of legal departments (54%) use automation in their contract lifecycle management (CLM), but to wildly varying degrees: 79% in Germany do, while only 31% in the United Kingdom can say the same. (The U.S. and France fall in-between, with 55% and 49%, respectively.) But that means that many legal professionals are practically being buried beneath an avalanche of contracts, on which 58% spend four to five hours or more daily. Still, it doesn’t have to be this way: AI solutions can quickly sift through thousands of contracts, uncovering risks, replacing language, and redlining them in less than two minutes – and accelerating approval by up to 70%.

3. Creating documents faster. Document drafting and analysis are a major part of any legal process. Supervised machine learning (ML), a subfield of AI that mimics controlled intelligent human decision-making, allows document automation to populate form fields of AI-assisted templates to expeditiously produce contracts, agreements, and invoices. This not only saves time dramatically – often reducing legal document drafting to less than five minutes! – but also increases precision, as AI tools are more likely to pick up questionable details humans might have missed while repeatedly reading so many pages.

4. Harnessing the power of data. Sifting through piles of data can take weeks, even months. But AI-driven tools – which can review up to 500 data points organized by relevant criteria, then extract high-quality data in just seconds, even compiling and synthesizing data in storytelling mode – can identify precedents, confirm completeness of data, and keep track of ever-changing regulations while bringing vital clarity, slashing time and spend, and finding leakages that could otherwise affect business opportunities and materiality.

The future of AI  in Legal

This is real life, of course, not a sci-fi movie. Introducing and incorporating AI into legal operations will not unleash a wave of robot lawyers. What it will do is make legal ops’ work a little easier by giving lawyers and legal professionals back their time to map key investments, foster deeper partnerships, drive forward-thinking innovation, and influence meaningful business outcomes, from topline revenue generation to bottom-line cost and operational efficiency.

The future for Legal is more than just unlocking the latest in technology. But evolving to embrace that tech will provide the modern digitalization, optimized workflows, and requisite collaboration to prove Legal’s image moment of impact is here – to transform the department’s brand image, grow the enterprise materially, and elevate the future business of law.

Read the ELR Report to learn more about how legal professionals view their relationships with internal clients in comparison to the image enterprise employees have of their legal departments.

*The ELR Report is a third-party, multinational study of 4,000 enterprise employees and 500 corporate legal professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany intended to showcase relationship dynamics and perceived image between corporate legal teams and enterprise organizations.