Author: Onit

How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law

Posted on November 11, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The legal industry has been undergoing a technological revolution in the past decade, and few technologies have been having a more significant impact than artificial intelligence. Lawyers everywhere are curious to know how artificial intelligence will affect the practice of law.

Nick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of ExcellenceNick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, recently sat down with Jared Correia, host of Above the Law’s Non-Eventcast podcast (available on Apple and Spotify), to discuss how AI impacts the legal world. Spoiler alert: it’s not Terminator time just yet.

The conversation started with an icebreaker about the latest Pixar movie, Lightyear, which proved to be an ideal segue into the topic of AI. Pixar is a prime example of how you can find success by using computers to do things differently.

Nick and Jared then discussed lawyers’ current attitudes toward AI and the lack of understanding about what AI truly is. To many, AI is an amorphous concept, made up of technical terms like “algorithms” and “machine learning” that aren’t always easily understood. Nick provides some handy definitions to clarify the terms.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law

AI can have a tremendous amount of value for corporate legal departments and law firms. Consider areas of routine work that involve a lot of data. AI brings efficiency to many traditionally time-consuming tasks, like due diligence, document preparation, eDiscovery, transcription, contract lifecycle management, and billing. With the time saved, lawyers can focus on more complex and meaningful tasks than administrative or manual work.

According to Nick, the reality is that most lawyers are likely already using AI even if they don’t realize it. The emerging technologies will continue to reshape the legal landscape. Technologies like chatbots and robotic process automation are rapidly changing the way lawyers practice law. AI is helping lawyers understand what clients want and assisting with the work that meets those needs. Whether it’s drafting contracts, answering billing queries, automating administrative work or something else, AI is making it an exciting time to be a lawyer. The time to start experimenting and capitalizing on AI is now, so lawyers can gain a competitive advantage going forward.

When you discuss how artificial intelligence will affect the practice of law, it’s helpful to understand what will happen in the near future. What can we expect from AI in the future? As Nick explains, we’ll see AI increasingly used for contract management, matter management and billing. For in-house teams, AI will be applied more often to managing assets. At law firms, it will be harnessed more and more for determining proper fees, billing, data management and back-office productivity.

You can find the entire Non-Eventcast podcast on Apple and Spotify to hear Nick and Jared’s entire discussion of all things legal AI.

To learn more about how artificial intelligence will affect the practice of law, we recommend the following resources.

Contact Onit today for more information about how AI powers contract lifecycle management, enterprise legal management and more offerings for corporate legal.

 

What Are CLM Tools and How Do They Help Sales, Procurement, and Legal?

Posted on November 9, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

Sales, procurement, and legal departments are increasingly turning to AI, automation, and other technologies to ease the burden of routine tasks, increase efficiencies, and better collaborate with other departments. Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools can be a cornerstone of this technological revolution. 

Why Companies Need Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Tools

Contract management challenges vary by department and role. However, many contract stakeholders desire a quick review process and visibility into contract activity.  

Sales departments know that contract delays mean delays in revenue-generating opportunities. They want to avoid “black box syndrome” when sending contracts for legal review; this makes options such as self-service and AI-assisted first pass review especially attractive.  

Procurement must effectively enable spend owners to maximize suppliers’ value and meet their objectives. For example, with contracts, they want to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders, manage contracts centrally, decrease risk, and reconcile spending against the budget. 

Legal has several concerns, including lack of oversight on current contracts, balancing speed and review, and losing revenue when add-ons, upgrades, and renewals are missed. 

Contract attorneys need to be able to consistently and efficiently compare third-party contracts to company contract standards and extract key provisions from large amounts of contracts to manage their company’s risks. They also need to quickly track critical dates and locate contracts in a searchable repository. 

Legal operations professionals face similar but often more practical contract management challenges that speak to their specialization. These challenges include accelerating turnaround time, reducing costs, and providing attorneys with tools to help them manage contracts, internal legal requests, and overall risks. 

What Are CLM Tools?

CLM tools streamline the contracting process from start to finish, bringing benefits to both the pre-signature and post-signature phases of contracting and creating self-service opportunities for stakeholders. As a result, CLM tools can reduce the average sales cycle by 24% and lower the average hours spent on contracts by 20%. 

They use technologies such as AI and automation to accelerate the review process and manage contracts from capture and creation, through negotiations and approvals, to execution and post-execution management. This end-to-end solution improves consistency, saves time, and surfaces critical insights allowing proactive, informed decision-making. For example, automation, AI, and CLM can reduce end-to-end NDA processing time by 70%.  

A typical contract lifecycle process. When handled manually, it can lead to delays, errors, high costs and increased risk.

A typical manual contract lifecycle can lead to delays, errors, high costs, and increased risk. 

How do CLM tools accomplish this? Here are some examples of how they work.

How do CLM tools accomplish this? An ideal CLM tool provides: 

  • A central repository serves as a single source for all contracts and associated documentation, eliminating the need to search for information. 
  • Partner and client self-service, providing an easy-to-use portal to request, submit, or create contracts. You can see an example of one here for NDA automation. 
  • Microsoft Word integration meeting people “where they work” so they can draft, pre-screen, edit, and review in their preferred word processing tool while maintaining a seamless and secure link to CLM. 
  • Conditional contract generation that automatically generates a contract with appropriate clauses based on a robust rules engine and contract metadata. 
  • The ability to securely manage and maintain contract clauses and templates in the cloud from a centralized location. 
  • Automatic version control and easy-to-use check-in, and check-out functionality. 
  • Obligation management allows for controlling and measuring tasks or milestones related to compliance. 
  • Automated risk mitigation identifies clauses and terms that add risk to your agreement to support negotiations and re-negotiations. 
  • Routing and approval automation that can be quickly built, deployed and updated as needed. 
  • Proactive alerts such as notifications or reminders sent by the technology as the contract progresses through its lifecycle. 

What Are CLM Tools Powered by AI?

In addition to the features mentioned above, the most effective CLM tools harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI). This includes a combination of AI techniques such as natural language processing, deep learning and proprietary algorithms that build and release fully-formed AI models. Here’s how AI supercharges contract management:

  • Pretrained AI – A CLM tool should come pre-trained on datasets that allow you to analyze NDAs, master service agreements, purchase agreements, third-party contract reviews, and more straight out of the box. The pre-trained AI will continue to learn to identify and enforce your organization’s unique contracting preferences over time. 
  • First-pass review and redlining – AI handles first-pass review quickly and accurately, analyzing the document, comparing it to the corporate playbook, and providing redlines for suggested changes. For example, if AI finds an indemnity clause or waiver that shouldn’t be in an NDA, it can redline that section. Or, if it doesn’t see a standard clause used in an NDA, the AI can automatically add it. So how do you start this process? It’s as easy as emailing the contract or submitting it through a user-friendly intake form. 
  • Smart checklists – AI goes beyond alerts with configurable checklists to create dynamic lists of concrete, task-based actions generated from your company playbook. 
  • Repapering – AI amends and redlines contract details and critical terms to comply with regulatory changes or M&A activities. 
  • Contract abstraction – AI identifies critical legal clauses, terms, and details in documents for easy analysis and syncing with your CLM. 
  • Audit compliance – CLM and AI automate large-scale legal contract reviews when regulatory changes occur and export relevant details in notes and reports. 
  • Due diligence – Automating batch review contracts for routine legal, due diligence frees up valuable resources. 
  • Legacy contract migration – AI analyzes and extracts legacy contract metadata, including critical dates, terms, and clauses, to assist in importing. 

How to Learn More about CLM Tools

Here are some more resources that answer the question, “What are CLM tools?”

Schedule a demonstration with us today to learn more about how CLM from Onit can benefit your legal department and other departments across your organization.

The Latest in Corporate Legal Department Trends and Resources (November 2021 Edition)

Posted on November 4, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Welcome to the November digest of the latest in corporate legal department trends and helpful resources. In this edition, you’ll find information on AI’s effect on practicing law, stringent steps to increase law firm diversity, the importance of a business perspective, how to benchmark legal technology investments and the latest in tech spending for UK law firms.

1.    AI vs. Lawyers: How Does AI Affect the Practice of Law?

There’s always the question: Will AI replace lawyers? The answer is no. But it will reduce congestion and manual work resulting from back-office administrative tasks that lawyers face every day.

In the latest episode of the Non-Eventcast podcast, host Jared Correia of Red Cave Consulting speaks with Nick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of Excellence. Together, they discuss fundamental components of AI, how it improves processes in the legal world, how it gives lawyers a valuable competitive edge and the future of AI in the next five years.

Source: Non-Eventcast podcast (Apple or Spotify)

2. Corporate Legal Departments Want Diversity, and They’re Using Money to Motivate Outside Counsel

One of the most prevalent legal department trends is diversity – and leaders are turning to the most significant penalty of all to push for compliance. They’re docking law firm fees. This can mean relocating work or reducing fees. It can also mean rewards for successful efforts.

This article from Bloomberg Businessweek discusses how Facebook, HP, Novartis and more have embraced fee-based strategies to motivate racial and gender diversity within outside counsel. Others, such as BT, reward successful diversity efforts with a chance to join their law office advisory panel.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek + Equality

3.    The Link Between In-House Tech Adoption and Legal Department Business Acumen

The concept of running the legal department like a business surfaced decades ago. It’s still one of the legal department trends zealously endorsed by many GCs, in-house lawyers and legal operations professionals. New opportunities made possible by legal technology mean there are even more opportunities to evolve this discipline.

In-house panelists gathered at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s annual meeting to discuss the skills sets that amplify legal technology ROI. Not surprisingly, they pinpoint the importance of a business perspective. You can read the article here.

Source: Legaltech News

4.    How to Benchmark Legal Technology Investments: One Company’s Journey

Speaking of legal technology ROI, let’s shift to benchmarking. Every legal department’s journey varies depending on priorities. In this on-demand webinar, legal ops executives from a global provider of multi-cloud services for apps discuss their mission to transform and scale legal services to accelerate its growth and simplify the customer experience. They’re joined by an expert from HBR Consulting, who breaks down legal department trends and how data plays a critical role in a successful legal tech transformation journey.

Source: Onit

5.    UK Legal Department Trends Alert: Increased Tech Spending, But Not for All of the UK 100

Here’s good news for corporate legal departments aiming to work more efficiently with their UK law firms. A recent survey, analyzed by Artificial Lawyer in this article, finds that 60% of UK 100 law firms bumped up their tech spending in 2021. Further, more law firms indicated that improving the use of technology is a top priority in the next year, with standardizing and centralizing processes not far behind. The one drawback: The publication notes that “… for a significant slice of the market that sits between 11th and 50th place by revenue, tech spending shrank a little relative to revenue.”

Source: Artificial Lawyer

Bonus Resource: How to Implement Legal Digital Transformation

CLOC recently gathered a panel of experts to discuss one of the most interesting legal department trends happening now: digital transformation. Large and small companies alike have increasingly turned their attention to legal digital transformation to increase efficiency and improve the legal function. However, it can be challenging to know where to start and how to keep yourself on track. These CLOC experts offered valuable advice for implementing legal transformation projects, including the top-five considerations. You can read more about it and hear the recording of the presentation here.

What to Look for in a Legal Operations Management Platform

Posted on October 29, 2021 by - Business Process Management

Legal operations management platforms technologies have been revolutionizing the way corporate legal departments and legal operations have been doing business in recent years. More and more legal professionals are abandoning their stand-alone software and solutions in favor of a platform approach to technology that better allows legal to streamline business processes, implement tailored solutions and collaborate with other departments across the enterprise.

While stand-alone solutions exist to serve a single purpose or handle a discrete task, such as e-billing or document management, platforms are robust environments where you can host all the tools you need to address whatever scenarios arise. The right platform will even allow you to build additional solutions yourself as needed, tailored to the needs of your individual organization.

Not all platforms are created equal, however. If you’re looking to upgrade your technology, there are specific considerations to keep in mind when evaluating a legal operations management platform.

Top Considerations When Choosing a Legal Operations Management Platform

Making the switch to a platform approach is a major step toward a better-operating legal function. To make sure you choose the best possible legal operations management platform, however, you should look for the following features.

  • No-code configuration: Your platform shouldn’t require you to be a coding expert or even overly tech-savvy. No-code platforms bridge the gap between business and technical users, allowing even users with no technical background to simply create new workflows and build necessary solutions.
  • Artificial Intelligence: Not all platforms are powered by AI. Those that are can learn, anticipate, reason and improve – in other words, they can function like lawyers. An AI platform automates and improves processes, allowing users to get more work done faster. Allowing for unlimited users, these platforms are critical to scaling your resources and controlling your spend as your needs change.
  • Enterprise considerations: Your legal operations management platform should be useful beyond legal. You need to be able to create the solutions needed for day-to-day operations across all departments in your organization, and even allow business users to engage in new levels of self-service for routine tasks.
  • Agility and speed: You need a platform that’s capable of adjusting and evolving as your needs change, and can start creating value as soon as possible once you implement those changes. Look for a platform that allows you to quickly build solutions right on the platform and continually release updates when they’re available.
  • Integrations and partnerships: While building your own solutions is important, you also want your platform to be able to seamlessly integrate with the third-party tools you rely on every day for your organization to function. You also want your platform provider to have strategic partnerships with the best talent and resources in the industry to maximize your investment.
  • Business intelligence and analytics: Legal operations professionals today have access to more data than ever before. Your platform should integrate robust business intelligence tools and analytics capabilities that allow you to gain important insights from that data and make more informed business decisions.

Onit’s Platforms

Onit is the only two-platform company in the market, offering legal operations professionals and legal departments the most flexibility to build the workflows and solutions they need. Apptitude is Onit’s business process workflow platform, which empowers organizations to easily create, modify and deploy limitless workflow solutions in a no-code environment. Precedent is an artificial intelligence platform that automates and improves both legal and business processes across organizations, allowing users to get more work done faster with the power of AI.

Schedule a demo or contact us today to learn more about how Onit’s platforms can help transform your legal operations function

Introducing Bodhala’s QBR Program

Posted on October 19, 2021 by - Legal Operations

Data-driven conversations are pivotal to successful law firm management and relationships — and for many smart legal departments, it all starts with quarterly business reviews (or QBRs).

That’s why we are launching the Bodhala QBR Program: to simplify the process for those already doing it and jumpstart a critical best-practice activity for those who aren’t. 

Using data to make better, more strategic decisions on key management issues, like rate review and panel review, has become table stakes for many corporate legal departments — and the trend is growing. Bodhala’s QBR Program will turn a cumbersome, seemingly never-ending task into a piece of cake, from start to finish. 

And the best part? It’s a completely white-glove service. By leveraging our advanced machine learning and AI, coupled with detailed analysis from our team of data scientists and legal industry experts, Bodhala QBRs deliver deep analysis and actionable recommendations, giving you the tools you need to effectively manage your objectives. 

So what do you get with Bodhala QBRs? We’re glad you asked.

1. Full Transparency & Trend Spotting 

By surfacing critical data and analyzing it across practice areas and firms on a quarterly basis, QBRs unearth important trends across important metrics like partner and associate rates, work allocation, and block billing. Detailed insights provide detailed insights on your law firms’ performance over time, highlighting areas you need to keep an eye on. 

2. Actionable Insights & Improved Reporting

Our QBR Program surfaces critical insights and provides you with clear recommendations for how to improve your desired outcome – whether it be negotiating a better rate, improving task-to-talent alignment, and everything in between. 

3. ROI Projections

Specific ROI estimates accompany each QBR recommendation. Designed to be easy to execute, with a clear associated value, you have a direct line of sight to the impact of your actions. 

You can be confident in the results – and the knowledge that you will be able to manage your budget more strategically. 

As pressure for accountability and proactive budget management continues to trickle down from the C-suite, data is no longer a nice-to-have but a need-to-have for corporate legal departments. Regular, data-driven conversations with your key stakeholders and law firms will not only set the foundation for stronger partnerships but will be a catalyst for better results. 

The Bodhala QBR Program will give you the tools you need to not only save time, money, and improve your outside counsel management. You will also be completely prepared to “wow” the internal stakeholders demanding visibility into your spend. 

So what are you waiting for? 

Book a demo with our team of legal experts to get started!

How to Implement Legal Digital Transformation

Posted on October 19, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

Companies both large and small have increasingly been turning their attention to legal digital transformation, with an eye toward implementing new initiatives and pursuing innovation that will help increase efficiency and improve the legal function. However, it can be challenging to know where to start and how to keep yourself on track.

Brad Rogers, Onit’s SVP of Strategy & Growth, headed up a CLOC Ask the Experts panel that offered some valuable advice for companies looking to implement legal transformation projects. Here are the top five considerations to keep in mind as you pursue legal transformation at your organization.

1.   Remember that legal digital transformation is a journey.

No matter how prepared or dedicated you are, the transformation won’t happen overnight. You need to think of it as a journey – and one that’s disruptive and often messy. You might not be able to plan precisely where you’re going, but you should know where you want to get goal-wise. Just be prepared for the path there to zig and zag along the way. Too many people think of legal digital transformation like building a skyscraper with square corners where you can count all the nuts and bolts you’ll need to get the job done. In reality, transformation is more like building a city, where many people are involved, and some neighborhoods will go faster or slower than others.

2.   Know the primary goals of your GC.

It’s essential to keep your GC’s primary goals in mind as you implement legal digital transformation and align your strategy with those goals. Most GCs have the same priorities, namely to protect the company, have a team of highly engaged, top talent, and boost efficiency to be a world-class legal department. Keeping these goals in mind at all times will keep your GC engaged in your transformation efforts and lead to a better outcome.

3.   Know the primary reasons why you’re transforming in the first place.

No transformation initiative will be successful without a concrete plan. It’s not only important to have a plan, though – you also need to be able to articulate it. Successful digital transformation requires buy-in from all the stakeholders in your organization. If you want to secure that buy-in, you need to be able to adequately explain the reasons behind your transformation in your company’s town hall, in team meetings or even in the elevator.

4.   Understand why data is important for legal digital transformation.

Data plays into legal transformation in a number of ways. First, a data-driven staffing model is the only way to fully understand how many and what type of resources you’ll need to make your transformation initiative succeed. Second, you need to present data on matters, risks, legal spend and more to help your GC and your company’s leadership team understand your organization’s legal exposure. Finally, you need to give your leadership and your lawyers data on the legal function to help them manage the business better.

5.   Foster a process-based mindset.

It’s not always easy to get your lawyers to think about processes. The way you think and speak about legal digital transformation may not line up with the way your lawyers think. To overcome the gap, you should start with a high-level process map that your lawyers can follow. It shouldn’t be overly detailed, but simply create clarity around roles and responsibilities. Another helpful tool is a dashboard that provides key operational metrics that break down the process in a way that’s easily understood.

You can listen to the entire panel here for more insight into best practices for pursuing legal digital transformation.

Onit is helping businesses of all sizes with their legal ops transformation journey. Contact us at [email protected] or schedule a demo to learn more.

ACC Panel: BT’s Efficiency Gains Through Digital Transformation

Posted on October 14, 2021 by - Company News and Events, Digital Transformation

Every year, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) hosts the world’s largest gathering of in-house counsel. Onit is proud to be a gold sponsor of this year’s ACC Annual Meeting, which will take place virtually from October 19–21, 2021.

This year’s schedule features an impressive roster of speakers from some of the world’s top corporations, who will be addressing some of the most pressing topics for corporate legal departments today. Among them is Onit customer British Telecom (BT), who will be talking about the company’s digital transformation journey along with Matt DenOuden, Onit’s SVP of Global Sales, on Thursday, October 21 at 9:00 a.m. CT.

BT’s Digital Transformation Story

Digital transformation has recently been sweeping across corporate legal departments, and BT is a prime example of how to do it successfully. BT’s recent efforts allowed them to see increased efficiency and productivity gains in a short period of time, thanks to implementing the right tools.

BT’s legal team took a multi-pronged approach to digital transformation that allowed them to re-envision their processes and technologies to optimize the delivery of legal services to stakeholders across the organization. Ultimately, BT reduced the complexity of its technology stack by 75 percent, were able to track and report on 70 percent of matters and overhauled how they track and control legal spend.

For BT, the digital transformation journey started with implementing technology that would serve as the backbone for company-wide transformation. BT replaced its existing piecemeal solutions with Onit’s business automation and workflow platform Apptitude. Using the platform, BT’s legal department was able to build the Apps it needed to help manage its matters and documents.

Within three months, BT’s new system was live for matter management and real-time reporting. Within a year, BT had successfully implemented a cutting-edge platform that eliminated manual management tools and disconnected processes. Going forward, BT’s legal department will continue to build and deploy the configurable solutions it needs on Onit’s platform, Apptitude, to automate legal operations and compliance processes and increase collaboration across the organization.

To hear more about BT’s transformation journey, you can listen to our podcast.

At the ACC panel, BT and Onit will offer insights into creating a digital transformation plan, how to combine organizational health, customer service and technology to create organizational success, what we can expect to see in the world of digital transformation going forward, and more. You can read the entire program for the ACC Annual Meeting and register to attend here.

Onit will be offering demos of all our products at our virtual booth. To find out more about how Onit can help with your organization’s digital transformation, contact us today.

Innovation in Action: ADM’s Self-Built Vendor Management App for Legal Operations

Posted on October 12, 2021 by - Business Process Management

In an earlier blog post, we looked at some of the latest Apps legal operations professionals build to solve some of their most complex business problems. Now, we’re excited to continue this exploration – this time by highlighting a genuinely innovative approach to vendor management developed by Fortune 100 company ADM.

Why an App?

As a massive company, ADM not surprisingly engages with numerous vendors to accomplish many crucial aspects of its business. What they didn’t have, though, was a standardized process around selecting the right vendor for a particular matter or project. They needed a complete process from start to finish for how teams would operate and how they would engage law firms on their various matters.

ADM has built a strong law firm network and has devoted significant time to negotiating rates and pricing systems, including alternative fee arrangements in some instances. The next step was creating a means to obtain competitive bids on projects to make sure that they had the right law firms handling the right matters. That meant instituting a matter-specific RFP process – but there were a lot of cumbersome communications and past practices to sort through in order to get there. In addition, they needed a consistent and reliable way to score RFP responses.

Simply put, ADM wanted an easy way to empower its attorneys to handle RFPs, law firm selection and executing engagement letters for themselves.

The Vendor Management Solution

ADM’s legal ops team is incredibly lean, so it was critical that any vendor management solution could be managed by their attorneys. Ultimately, the answer was to build it themselves.

A crucial factor for ADM was that the entire vendor management process happen in a single place, rather than relying on cobbling together disparate tools that don’t necessarily integrate to create a seamless workflow. ADM turned to Onit’s Apptitude workflow automation platform, which allows organizations to turn ad hoc, chaotic, inefficient, everyday manual intensive work into manageable defined processes, to build the vendor management App that would meet its needs.

The App they created addressed vendor selection at the matter level, was standard across how their teams operate and combined the processes they were already using rather than reinventing the wheel.

At the end of the day, ADM’s new App addressed three problems that had been hindering efficiency: standardizing vendor approval,  automating engagement letter creation and execution, and streamlining the RFP process. They were able to combine all three aspects of the vendor management process into a single App that also leveraged vendor data and metrics. A key component of the App is always showing the attorney where they are in the process, what steps are left to complete and showing help text to walk them through the process. ADM utilized visualization of both phases and a task grid within the Onit tool.

As Aaron Van Nice, Vice President of Legal Operations at ADM, explains:

“I wanted a tool that really helped us and empowered our attorneys to conduct matter-specific Competitive RFPs themselves. There were some steps that we wanted to help them with, but the idea was to make this easy enough for them to do it themselves. We needed something that was efficient that could be managed by our attorneys. And that’s what we built.”

Today, ADM can use Onit Apptitude with their vendor management App to draft RFPs, send communications to vendors, accept questions or proposal submissions, review submissions, score proposals for each vendor and pre-approve vendors for review by Van Nice and ADM’s GC, who can ultimately approve hiring within the App. In addition to the vendor management App, ADM also built an engagement letter App that allows them to automatically generate engagement letters and send them through e-signature for execution.

In a nutshell, ADM succeeded in connecting all the dots in the vendor management process via Onit Apps.

To hear more about Onit’s new App Catalog and see a demo of ADM’s new vendor management App, you can listen to the webinar, Drive Legal Innovation One App at a Time, here. The webinar offers valuable insights about driving legal ops innovation.

To learn more about getting started with Onit Apptitude and building your own Apps to solve critical business problems, contact Onit today.

Event Announcement: Women Influence & Power in Law

Posted on October 7, 2021 by - Company News and Events

Onit is a proud champion of diversity and inclusion. This week, we’re sponsoring the annual Women Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) conference in Washington, D.C. The WIPL conference offers an unprecedented opportunity for women leaders, in-house counsel, and outside counsel to exchange insights and discuss some of today’s top issues facing women in the law and the legal industry in general.

Conference Snapshot

The three-day event takes place from October 6–8, 2021 and features an impressive roster of speakers, including Onit VP of Legal & Compliance, Stasha Jain. This year’s keynote speakers are Katharine Manning, author of The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job, Rev. Dr. Iyania Vanzant, noted author and personal growth expert, and Judge Rosemarie Aquilina of the 30th Circuit Court, Ingham County, Michigan, who is most famous for presiding over the 2018 USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal and sentencing Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison.

Every year, hundreds of the legal industry’s most powerful and influential women attend the conference. This unique event is the brainchild of an esteemed advisory board made up of high-ranking women around the globe who have extensive expertise leading legal departments and practice areas.

This year’s conference features 15 tracks and nearly 50 sessions, including keynote presentations, roundtables, and workshops, covering everything from social justice to privacy and security to quality of life and much more. You can see the entire schedule for the event here.

The WIPL conference offers something for everyone. Attendees typically represent a who’s who of corporate counsel, associate general counsel, chief legal officers, corporate compliance officers, senior counsel, and general counsel.

You can register for the conference here.

Onit at WIPL

On Thursday, October 7, 2021 from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Onit’s very own VP of Legal & Compliance, Stasha Jain, will moderate a champagne round table entitled Building Healthy Boundaries & Creating Daily Rituals. The session will focus on how we can leverage technology to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

Stasha has been practicing law for more than 15 years, largely in an in-house counsel role. In her current position at Onit, Stasha is responsible for all legal support for Onit and its affiliates. Stasha and her team work closely with the Onit leadership team and other key stakeholders to efficiently deliver legal services. Her extensive experience allows her to give expert insight into not only running an efficient legal department, but also into what it takes to create a health work/life divide.

About WIPL

WIPL has a longstanding commitment to diversity, and for over a decade has been providing a forum designed to drive meaningful conversations and actionable solutions surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion in the legal community. At the same time, they’re committed to uplifting and celebrating those who identify as women in the industry.

You’re welcome to join the conversation. Register for the conference today.

For more information on how Onit is helping organizations of all sizes transform their legal operations, contact us today.

Corporate Legal Operations Resources and News (October 2021 Edition)

Posted on October 5, 2021 by - Business Process Management

Welcome to Onit’s October compilation of some of the most pertinent and timely articles and legal operations resources. In this month’s digest, we explore a piece of concrete proof for diversity advancement, lagging adoption in automation, the Gartner Hype Cycle and how to reduce time spent on invoice review. We hope you find some valuable takeaways.

1. New Study Reveals Women Legal Execs’ Salaries Outpacing Their Male Counterparts

Women legal executives have some great news to celebrate. According to a recent survey, while salaries for male general counsel remained flat at $2.7 million, the median total compensation for women GCs topped more than $3 million last year – and pay has increased more than 17% since 2019. The number of women GCs surveyed also increased from 33% to 36% in the same amount of time. This offers some proof that companies are willing to pay upper-echelon salaries for diverse legal talent. (Source: Law.com)

2. Gartner Reveals that Trust, Growth and Change are Driving Emerging Technology

Quantum ML is on the rise, and NFTs and decentralized identity are on the cusp of disillusionment, according to the latest Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. This intriguing article illustrates three overarching trends that its analysts believe will drive organizations to investigate emerging technology, including engineering trust, accelerating growth and sculpting change. Gartner, who is always one of the most valuable legal operations resources for technologies, also explores how a key enabler of competitive differentiation and a catalyst for transformation are driving technology innovation. (Source: Gartner)

3. Are Law Firms Lagging on Automation?

Many law firms continue to demonstrate interest in technology that helps automate manual workflows and improve efficiency, but surprisingly, many others are still lagging behind. About 75% of law firms that responded to a recent survey report that they are not provided with the technology to do their jobs effectively. One reason for this is a crucial disconnect. Administrators mistakenly believe they have provided legal with all the technology they need. The result is that staff spend too much time on routine administrative tasks that automation could handle. (Source: ABA Journal)

4. Legal Trends Lawyers Should Know About

We’re going meta now by sharing legal trends from a compilation of legal trends. The National Law Review recaps a recent report by the ABA that discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the legal industry, how attorney wages are growing faster than inflation, an increase in bar passage rates, progress on the diversity front and some insights on the post-pandemic job market. (Source: The National Law Review)

5. How to Free Yourself from Legal Invoice Review

Legal invoice review often invokes frustration from in-house counsel. After all, which busy lawyer wants to set aside interesting work to review a 100-page law firm bill?  Advances like e-billing and billing guidelines have helped the process tremendously, but there’s still room for improvement. In this podcast, Onit’s Matt DenOuden and Mary Fuzat sit down to discuss the challenges of legal invoice review and how AI finds “between the rules” savings and gives attorneys back time for more strategic contributions. (Source: Onit podcast)

A Bonus Option for Legal Operations Resources

Ready for a break? Try out this video if you need a change from watching puppies or listening to guided meditations for a mid-day lift. You’ll never look at legal billing the same again.