Author: Onit

Empower Legal Operations Automation with the Best CLM Tools

Posted on January 21, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

The right legal contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution is a crucial component of your legal ops toolbox.

When you work in legal operations, you’re required to wear a lot of hats. On any given day, you’ll work closely with general counsel as well as business stakeholders at all levels of your company. Legal operations is key in creating processes and practices that improve the day-to-day efficiency and effectiveness of the company’s legal team and, in turn, the company as a whole. Contracts are the lifeblood of corporate legal departments, and having tools to manage them is critical to the efficiency legal ops is trying to achieve.

Contract Lifecycle Management in Day-to-Day Legal Operations

It’s nearly impossible to think about legal operations without thinking about contracts. On a daily basis, you’re requesting and drafting contracts, monitoring their progress and obtaining signatures. On top of that, you’re responsible for implementing tools to streamline your organization’s legal practices, developing and enforcing processes and policies to manage outside counsel usage and spend, assisting with budget matters and optimizing workflows within the legal department, and managing the design, rollout and training for new systems – just to name a few things.

With that many important roles on your plate, monitoring contracts doesn’t need to be taking up any more of your time than it has to. With the right tool for managing your contracts from start to finish, you’ll be freed up to focus on tasks that are more critical to boosting efficiency and creating value for the organization.

Finding the Right CLM Solution

As is the case with most legal technology these days, there’s no shortage of options when it comes to choosing a contract lifecycle management solution. In making your choice, it’s important to keep in mind the pain points you’re trying to address in legal operations and the functionalities you want to achieve from your new tool.

Among the biggest challenges that legal ops professionals tend to face when it comes to CLM are:

  • Having a lack of visibility into where your deals stand, who’s responsible for them and what the next steps are at any given time
  • Having no easy way to keep contract drafting and negotiation moving forward
  • Needing an effective way to reduce risk and improve governance
  • Needing to accelerate contract turnaround time while also reducing costs
  • Having no means of self-service, and instead having to rely on others to handle contracts

The ideal CLM tool will serve as a single point of truth for all your contract data, allowing you to standardize your processes and increase efficiency through automation. You’ll have real-time insight into where each contract stands and who might be holding it up, so you can nudge them along and keep everything moving smoothly. CLM solutions also allow you to easily find contracts and have visibility into your renewal and amendments cycles without overwhelming you with information – the best tools allow you to see only the information you need to see, when you need and want to see it.

Implementing CLM in Legal Ops

Legal operations professionals are no strangers to developing, implementing, and using today’s most cutting-edge legal tech solutions. Using technology to manage contracts should be no exception. CLM tools help bolster the practice of corporate law, streamlining the contractual processes that are so integral to the operation of every legal department, and, indeed, every organization operating today.

Contact us today to learn more about how Onit can help you with end-to-end automation of your entire contract management process.

January Digest: Current Legal Operations Trends and Industry News

Posted on January 19, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

From COVID to cost-cutting, here are some of the leading industry articles on legal operations trends. This blog post represents a new monthly feature that shares the latest industry news for corporate legal and legal operations professionals.

#1

Legal Ops May Still Struggle for a Seat at the Table in 2021

(source: Legaltech News)

COVID has forced many professions to pivot in how they approach their jobs. Legal operations is no exception. In this article, experts share how 2020 will shape legal operations trends in 2021. Nick Whitehouse, GM of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence, discusses the importance of building smart processes and workflows to remove low-value work from in-house and the growing adoption of AI-enable contract lifecycle management, automated third-party contract reviews and document automation. Roycee Hasuko, director of product engagement for SimpleLegal, advocates for the importance of clean data and systems to convey business priorities and how remote working will require legal ops to continue investments in communications strategies and cross-functional collaboration. You can read the full article here.

#2

Legal departments cut outside spending, focus on managers and specialists, study shows

(source: ABA Journal)

Legal departments have always been under pressure to cut costs, but last year has taken this to unprecedented new levels. The current pandemic has been responsible for the largest part of this pressure. This article examines legal operations trends uncovered by a Gartner survey, highlighting the fact that more legal spending (57%) is staying in-house compared to previous years, participants are expecting reductions in their budgets and 94% say their headcount will remain the same or be reduced. Find the full article here.

#3

Forging Into The Unknown: How COVID-19 Has Already Changed Legal Department Budget Planning

(source: Corporate Counsel)

We always like to maintain a sense of optimism about getting back to normal after the pandemic, and rightfully so. But some believe that things in legal departments will get much more complicated before there’s a return to normalcy. Budgets are the topic of discussion in this article, from opinions on tweaking budgets from previous years,  the role of analytics and “giving smarter haircuts.” The full text of the article is published here.

#4

COVID-19 Proved the Value of Legal Operations In-House

(source: Corporate Counsel)

Despite COVID challenges, many forward-thinking legal ops professionals have made significant strides in finding ways to save money. This article looks at how these individuals have discovered new ways to use their existing technology instead of acquiring additional technology, as well as how they were able to smoothly transition from the office to home. You can read the article here.

#5

Artificial Intelligence Trends Impacting Corporate Legal Departments

(source: Reinventing Professionals)

After ringing in the New Year, it’s that time again to examine current trends in our industry. Ari Kaplan of Reinventing Professionals recently interviewed Nick Whitehouse, general manager of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence. In this thought-provoking interview, they cover several aspects of AI and legal operations trends and how they translate to efficiency and savings for corporate legal. You can listen to the podcast here.

Additional Resources for Legal Trends

If you’re interested in more resources related to legal operations trends, here are some recommendations:

  • To support our customers and colleagues in the legal operations field, Onit offers free Business Continuity Apps to support remote workers and their families that are sheltering at home.
  • Interested in hearing more about how to trim spend? In our Virtual Legal Resourcing Debate with Buying Legal Council, three teams of legal professionals debate different approaches and their pros and cons.
  • In this on-demand webinar, the legal operations team at Pearson shares how they radically transformed how they manage contracts, cutting costs annually by roughly 30%.

We hope you find these articles helpful. We’ll return in February with another industry update on legal operations trends.

How Enterprise Contract Lifecycle Management Software is Changing the Game for General Counsel

Posted on January 14, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Managing risk at an organization is a full-time job, especially for a general counsel (GC) or chief legal officer (CLO). As a company’s chief internal lawyer, they are expected to provide legal advice on a vast range of subjects – legal rights, risk mitigation, compliance with new and existing laws and so much more.

If that weren’t enough, GCs and CLOs are also expected to manage the organization’s legal matters, oversee outside counsel spend, conduct legal research, review internal litigation strategy, and be the ultimate approver and keeper of the organization’s contracts. Despite handling all these critical, sensitive matters, legal departments are often seen as “cost centers” and therefore are forced to do their challenging jobs without all the resources they need to succeed.

Technology, automation and artificial intelligence are key to doing more with less and streamlining processes, particularly when it comes to contracts. Enterprise contract lifecycle management software allows busy lawyers end-to-end control over contracts, freeing up time to focus on other tasks in the process. They can also play pivotal roles in helping corporate legal departments reduce contract management costs. For example, Pearson’s commercial transactions shared service center for more than 10,000 users worldwide achieved a 35% cost reduction and 30% improved contract turnaround time.

Contractual Pain Points

Even the simplest contracts can expose an organization to risk and liability if it’s not handled correctly. GCs and CLOs are tasked with overseeing the crucial job of examining and creating draft agreements, maintaining knowledge of the organization’s operations and legal documents, approving non-standard contract language and more.

Without a centralized solution for managing contracts on an organization-wide basis, legal departments run into countless hurdles, including:

  • Inconsistent language between contracts, often caused by employees using out-of-date contract templates
  • Competing objectives of moving contracts through quickly yet still having enough oversight to effectively manage risk obligations
  • A lack of insight into all the organization’s current contracts
  • An inability to track changes in contracts and ensure that contracts are in compliance with new and existing laws and regulations
  • The risk that contracts might expire or renew without notice because no one’s tracking them
  • Complicated review and approval processes for even standard contracts
  • Manual review and approval processes that create longer contract cycle times
  • Human error and inconsistencies inherent in manual processes, increasing the organization’s risk exposure
  • Lost revenue when add-ons, upgrades and renewals are missed
  • Being seen by other aspects of the business as a barrier to closing deals

The above list is by no means exhaustive. Given the large volume of contracts at today’s modern businesses, the challenges presented by trying to manage those contracts can become overwhelming when you rely on manual processes or basic contract tools that lack automation and AI for general counsel, as well as a means of creating a single source of truth for the organization’s contracts.

The Benefits of Contract Lifecycle Management Tools

While the challenges outlined above may seem daunting, they’re not insurmountable. CLM tools use automation and AI to remove the tedious, manual aspects of traditional contract management, increasing accuracy and efficiency, eliminating errors, and freeing up precious time that GCs and CLOs can use to focus on the many other critical tasks they’re responsible for handling.

Leverage the benefits of contract lifecycle management software to take control of your corporate legal budget and take the headaches out of risk management.

Among other things, the right enterprise contract lifecycle management software will allow you to:

  • Find every contract you need, when you need it
  • Store all your contracts in one cloud location, creating a single source of truth for your organization’s contract data
  • Have full visibility at all times into the status of contract drafting, negotiations, amendments, and renewals, ensuring that nothing’s missed or overlooked
  • Implement uniform templates and playbooks to speed up contract cycle times, reduce manual errors and ensure you’re always using preferred terms
  • Automate approval processes to eliminate bottlenecks
  • Be notified of contract renewals to get a jumpstart on the process
  • Allow for self-service, so that other departments can create standard contracts with the correct language without legal review
  • Improve legal risk management across the organization
  • Improve efficiencies and free up the corporate legal budget for strategic use by automating contract lifecycle management
  • Demonstrate that the legal department is a strategic partner of the business, not a cost center

The ideal CLM tool will give you real-time insights into all phases of the contract lifecycle and provide you with actionable intelligence to make informed decisions for the business. More information means a better ability to identify and control risks across the contract process.

It’s time to take control of your contracts and let contract lifecycle management for general counsel and automation do the heavy lifting for you. Contact us today to learn more about how Onit can help you implement end-to-end CLM for your organization.

Overcoming Law Firm WIP Reporting Challenges

Posted on January 12, 2021 by - Enterprise Legal Management

While e-billing has brought new transparency, control, and clarity to the billing process for in-house teams, one criticism of “conventional” e-billing is that the client is still not able to see the time and expenses being charged by their external law firms until the final invoice is sent (whether that is a draft or an engrossed version).

The goal is to be able to see the work carried out and the associated costs during the life of the matter itself and be able to query or even reject items early in the billing cycle. This is necessary for accurate cost control, forecasting, and avoiding invoice surprises. This WIP (Work in Progress) information has long been the subject of discussion between in-house legal teams and law firms. Until recently, law firms have only been able to provide rough estimates of accruals – usually at the end of each month – without any detail.

The key areas that an in-house legal team should be able to monitor to stay in control of its legal spend are:

  • Cost overruns against budget/forecast.
  • Counsel’s pre-billing time entries
  • Large amounts of a single activity (e.g. research, drafting etc.).
  • Wide date ranges between the work carried out and the time/fees submitted to the client.

WIP REPORTING IS BENEFICIAL FOR LAW FIRMS AND CORPORATE LEGAL TEAMS

Modern legal spend management solutions such as Onit’s BusyLamp includes WIP reporting as a key feature. It adds an extra dimension to the relationship between corporate legal teams and their external law firms. Some of the advantages of WIP reporting for both parties include the following:

  • The law firm adds value for the client through enhanced billing data – over and above the provision of quality legal advice.
  • The law firm has confidence that the work performed (so far) has been accepted by the client, and there will be no pushback when presenting the final invoice.
  • The client has more certainty that the work is done correctly and in line with the billing guidelines. Detailed actual spend versus budget can be monitored early in the transaction and through all its phases

CHALLENGES OF WIP REPORTING FOR LAW FIRMS

Despite these benefits, implementing WIP reporting has its challenges. While some law firms have embraced the requests from their clients to provide timely and accurate WIP information, several law firms still need to fully meet the WIP reporting requirement.

A common concern is that firms view the “raw” WIP information as law firm data that the client should not see. Many large international firms have specialist revenue controllers working within the legal teams and closely with the deal partners. These firms also have well-established billing processes, a crucial part involving revenue staff and partners reviewing the WIP for each matter before finalizing the bill. They will decide which items of time to charge. More importantly, they will also check that time narratives are worded appropriately and are suitable for the client’s view.

In most firms, lawyers get advice regarding appropriate content for matter narratives. Still, several hundred associates can work on matters, and it is impossible to “police” what they enter before the bill data is “cleaned up.” The firms are reluctant to go through this cleaning-up process on the WIP data (even though it may be for a small number of bills) as partners see it as doubling up on work. Furthermore, no partner wants to be the first to allow a client to review WIP information in case it contains inappropriate content.

Another reason sometimes quoted by law firms for not wanting to provide WIP revolves around the timing and process issues associated with WIP information. What are the consequences if the client rejects some or all of this information? Some firms argue that if WIP information must be re-submitted, it may fall outside the acceptable time limits between the work done and when it gets billed. These firms often seek to establish reasonable windows and processes for WIP review and resubmission if any line entries are not approved.

A final objection is that producing WIP files in the LEDES e-bill format requires development work to be scheduled by the Finance/IT Systems team. Some firms have implemented manual workarounds for supporting WIP submissions, but this is not sustainable in the long term and for a growing number of invoices.

OVERCOMING WIP REPORTING CHALLENGES

E-billing vendors, in-house legal teams and law firms have together come up with a number of compromises to address these challenges, which include:

  • Line-Item Narratives: If this is a concern, parties may agree to drop narratives from the WIP upload or substitute them with holding text saying that the narratives will be on the final bill. If approved, the clients would at least see costs and the associated activity or expenses based on the LEDES code (e.g., communicating, drafting and so on).
  • Billing Cycles and Accruals: The client can achieve similar output if the billing cycle is reduced to a calendar month, allowing them to view that month’s work. Another option would be to improve the information supplied as accruals. This would not give all the time details to the in-house team but would meet some of the requirements.
  • LEDES Output Requirement: To address the concerns of law firms about possible additional IT development work, Onit has developed two alternative methods used with BusyLamp:
    • Firms can output their WIP information as an Excel spreadsheet, which can then be uploaded into the e-billing application as required by the client. As all law firms have access to Excel as standard and have staff who can use it, the issue of needing expensive billing system changes gets minimized.
    • AI functionality in BusyLamp can extract non-LEDES-format, unstructured WIP data into meaningful and useful reports for the in-house legal team.

For a successful WIP reporting implementation, legal teams should engage with the law firm partners early in the process and discuss the requirement for WIP reporting. This should include why the in-house team requires WIP and what they aim to achieve from tracking it. It will help overcome some of the arguments against providing WIP and help all parties explore suitable alternatives that still give the in-house legal department what they need to succeed.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.Space today.

WIE KANZLEIEN DIE HINDERNISSE DES WIP-REPORTS ÜBERWINDEN KÖNNEN 

Posted on January 12, 2021 by - Enterprise Legal Management

WARUM TRANSPARENZ BEI WORK IN PROGRESS (WIP) SO WICHTIG IST 

Durch die elektronische Rechnungsstellung (eBilling) gewannen Inhouse-Teams neue Transparenz, mehr Möglichkeiten Kosten zu steuern und ein gewisses Maß an Klarheit bezüglich der Abrechnungen. Dennoch blieb ein Kritikpunkt beim “herkömmlichen” eBilling: Fehlende Einblicke in die bisherigen Kosten und erfassten Zeiten auf aktuellen Projekten. Erst nach Erhalt der finalen Rechnung, beziehungsweise eines Drafts, erhielt man einen Überblick. 

Es ist verständlich, dass Mandanten die durchgeführten Arbeiten und die damit verbundenen Kosten bereits während der Laufzeit der Matter verfolgen wollen, um so Positionen frühzeitig im Abrechnungszyklus zu hinterfragen oder sogar ablehnen zu können. Dies ist für eine genaue Kostenkontrolle und -prognose sowie zur Vermeidung von Überraschungen in der Rechnungsstellung notwendig. Diese WIP-Informationen sind schon lange Gegenstand von Diskussionen zwischen Mandanten und Kanzleien. Bis vor kurzem konnten Kanzleien nur grobe Schätzungen der Rechnungshöhe – meist am Ende eines jeden Monats – ohne jede Detailtiefe liefern. 

Einige der wichtigsten Bereiche, die ein Mandant typischerweise nachverfolgen möchte, sind: 

  • Kostenüberschreitungen gegenüber dem Budget/der Prognose 
  • Hohe Mengen einer einzelnen Art von Aktivität (z. B. Recherchen oder Entwürfe) 
  • Große Zeitspannen zwischen der durchgeführten Arbeit und den an den Mandanten eingereichten Zeiten/Honoraren. 

WIP-REPORTING BIETET AUCH KANZLEIEN MEHRWERTE 

Eines der Kernfunktionalitäten von Onit’s Legal Spend Management-Lösung BusyLamp eBilling.Space ist ein solches WIP-Reporting. Durch diese Funktion lässt sich die Beziehung zwischen Mandant und Kanzlei auf eine ganz neue Ebene heben. Einige der Vorteile des WIP-Reporting, die beide Parteien genießen, sind: 

  • Die Kanzlei liefert nebst hochwertiger Beratung einen weiteren Mehrwert in Form von verbesserten Abrechnungsdaten. 
  • Die Kanzlei hat die Gewissheit, dass die (bisher) geleistete Arbeit vom Mandanten akzeptiert wurde und es bei der Vorlage der Schlussrechnung keinen Push-Back geben wird. 
  • Der Mandant hat mehr Gewissheit, dass die Arbeit korrekt und im Einklang mit den Billing Guidelines durchgeführt wird. So kann schon früh ein Soll-Ist-Vergleich durchgeführt werden, um die Einhaltung des Budgets in allen Phasen der Transaktion sicherzustellen. 

HERAUSFORDERUNGEN DES WIP-REPORTINGS FÜR KANZLEIEN 

Trotz der Vorteile bringt ein WIP-Reporting auch gewisse Nachteile mit sich. Zwar erfüllen viele Kanzleien ihren Mandanten den Wunsch, zeitnahe und präzise WIP-Angaben zu übermitteln, einige wenige sträuben sich aber noch immer dagegen oder können die Anforderungen an WIP-Reporting einfach nicht erfüllen. 

Häufig sehen Kanzleien die “unverarbeiteten” WIP-Informationen als interne Daten an, die der Mandant nicht sehen sollte. Viele der großen internationalen Kanzleien setzen daher spezialisierte Revenue Controller ein, die innerhalb der juristischen Teams und eng mit den Deal-Partnern zusammenarbeiten. Solche Kanzleien haben auch gut etablierte Abrechnungsprozesse, bei denen die Mitarbeiter der Finanzabteilung und die Partner den WIP für jede Matter überprüfen, bevor die Rechnung fertiggestellt wird. Sie entscheiden, welche der erfassten Zeiten in Rechnung gestellt werden sollen. Noch wichtiger ist, dass sie auch überprüfen, ob die Zeitangaben angemessen formuliert und für den Mandanten geeignet sind. 

In den meisten Kanzleien werden die Anwälte hinsichtlich des Inhalts der Matter-Beschreibung beraten. Manche Projekte werden allerdings von mehreren hundert Associates gleichzeitig bearbeitet und es ist unmöglich zu überprüfen, was sie eingeben, bevor die Rechnungsdaten bereinigt werden. Die Kanzleien scheuen diesen Bereinigungsprozess (auch wenn es sich nur um eine kleine Anzahl von Rechnungen handelt), da die Partner dies als doppelte Arbeit ansehen. Außerdem möchte kein Partner der erste sein, der einem Mandanten die Einsicht in WIP-Daten erlaubt, falls diese unangemessene Inhalte enthalten. 

Ein weiterer Grund, der manchmal von Kanzleien angeführt wird, dreht sich um die zeitlichen und prozessualen Probleme, die mit WIP-Informationen verbunden sind. Genauer gesagt, was sind die Konsequenzen, wenn der Mandant einige oder sogar alle Informationen ablehnt? Einige Kanzleien argumentieren, dass, wenn WIP-Informationen erneut eingereicht werden müssen, die akzeptable Zeitspanne zwischen der Erledigung der Arbeit und ihrer Abrechnung überschritten werden kann. Sie versuchen oft, angemessene Zeitfenster und Prozesse für die Überprüfung und Wiedervorlage von WIP-Informationen festzulegen, für den Fall, dass Line Items nicht genehmigt werden. 

Ein letzter Einwand ist, dass die Erstellung von WIP-Dateien im LEDES-eBill-Format Entwicklungsarbeit erfordert, die vom Finanz-/IT-Team eingeplant werden muss. Manche Kanzleien haben manuelle Workarounds zur Unterstützung von WIP-Einreichungen implementiert, aber das ist auf Dauer und für eine wachsende Anzahl von Rechnungen nicht tragbar. 

WIE MAN DIE HERAUSFORDERUNGEN DES WIP-REPORTING ÜBERWINDET 

Anbieter von eBilling-Software, Mandanten wie auch Kanzleien, haben zusammen eine Reihe von Kompromissen als Lösungsansätze gefunden. Darunter: 

  • Positionserläuterungen: Parteien können vereinbaren, dass Line Items aus dem WIP-Upload gestrichen oder sie mit einem Platzhalter versehen werden. Letzterer könnte besagen, dass die Line Items nur auf der endgültigen Rechnung erscheinen. Wenn dies vereinbart wird, können die Mandanten zumindest die Kosten und die damit verbundenen Aktivitäten oder Ausgaben basierend auf dem LEDES-Code sehen (z. B. Kommunikation, Entwurf, Recherche usw.). 
  • Abrechnungszyklen und Abgrenzungen: Der Mandant kann ein ähnliches Ergebnis erzielen, wenn der Abrechnungszyklus auf einen Kalendermonat reduziert wird, sodass er einen Überblick über die Arbeit dieses Monats hat. Eine weitere Möglichkeit wäre, die als Abgrenzungen gelieferten Informationen zu verbessern. Dies würde dem Mandanten zwar nicht alle Zeitdetails liefern, aber einige der Anforderungen erfüllen. 
  • LEDES Anforderung: Um den Bedenken von Anwaltskanzleien über möglichen zusätzlichen IT-Entwicklungsaufwand zu begegnen, haben wir zwei alternative Methoden entwickelt, die im BusyLamp-Modul verwendet werden können: 
    • Kanzleien können ihre WIP-Informationen als Excel-Tabelle speichern, welche dann in BusyLamp hochgeladen werden kann. Da alle Kanzleien standardmäßig Zugang zu Excel haben, werden teure Änderungen am Abrechnungssystem minimiert. 
    • Die KI-Funktionalität in BusyLamp kann unstrukturierte WIP-Daten, die nicht im LEDES-Format vorliegen, in aussagekräftige und nützliche Reports extrahieren. 

Abschließend kann gesagt werden, dass für eine erfolgreiche Implementierung des WIP-Reports der Mandant frühzeitig mit den Partnern der Kanzlei zusammenarbeiten und die Anforderungen an das WIP-Reporting besprechen sollte. Dabei sollte geklärt werden, warum der Mandant WIP-Informationen benötigt und was er mit den Informationen erreichen möchte. Dies wird einige der Argumente entkräften, die gegen die Bereitstellung von WIP vorgebracht werden. Beiden Parteien wird so geholfen, geeignete Alternativen zu finden, die der Inhouse-Rechtsabteilung immer noch das geben, was sie für ihren Erfolg braucht. 

Englischer Original-Blog von Bryan King und übersetzt ins Deutsche 

Legal Ops in 2020: A Look at How Law Departments Have Weathered the Storm

Posted on January 12, 2021 by - Business Process Management

There’s no question that 2020 was an unusual year for organizations across all industries – and their law departments. From being forced into working from home overnight to embracing new technologies at an accelerated pace, law departments have adapted in ways they never imagined.

The Blickstein Group recently released its 13th Annual Law Department Operations Survey, titled “Weathering the Storms of 2020.” The findings show that, despite the pandemic’s unprecedented challenges and novel demands, corporate law departments have weathered those storms well.

As the survey points out, the world changed dramatically in the year since the 2019 Law Department Operations Survey. The impacts of those changes, however, were less dramatic. Here are just some of the critical insights about legal ops in 2020.

The Biggest Challenges

Survey respondents were asked to identify their most significant challenges in 2020 relating to law department functions, and notably, COVID-19 was nowhere near the top of the list. Instead, the top-three challenges identified were:

  • Cost containment and savings/managing the budget – 60.3%
  • Business process improvements – 56.2%
  • Departmental resources (e.g. funding for personnel/technology, personnel retention) – 38.4%

Concerns about cost containment are nothing new, as managing costs and budgeting have long been a focus for legal ops professionals. The same is likely to remain true throughout 2021 and into the future, making Enterprise Legal Management solutions – which simplify legal operations by analyzing legal spend, minimizing company risk and driving process efficiency – valuable investments.

Delivery of Work Product

Disruption to everyday business practices and routines seemed to come from all sides in 2020, but law departments didn’t let that stand in their way. When asked if they noticed a diminished ability of their internal legal teams to deliver work product due to the pandemic and working from home, a staggering 94% of respondents said no.

Much of this ability to avoid disruption can be attributed to advanced technologies that support remote legal operations management work, allowing legal departments to deliver the high-quality work product from anywhere. Automation and AI also played a major role in seeing legal ops through the pandemic. For example, a tool like Review AI automates contract review, cuts contract review time by up to 70% and increases accuracy in reviewing, redlining and editing all types of contracts. These tools are critical to improving efficiency and eliminating manual tasks that would otherwise present barriers to remote work

Focus on Diversity

The pandemic wasn’t the only thing grabbing headlines in 2020. Diversity and inclusion were perhaps more in the spotlight than ever before. While companies across the country struggled to figure out how to best address diversity and inclusion within their ranks, what was clear was that more and more law departments were turning the focus to these issues. When asked what employee-related metrics they track, 72.7% reported tracking diversity, up significantly from prior years’ surveys.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for improving diversity and inclusion, technology can play a significant role in achieving progress. At Onit’s recent Hack the House competition, one team – Team Diversity – built a solution to expand opportunities for diversity and an equal opportunity workspace using Onit Apptitude in just three weeks. (You can see a demo here.) This is only one example of how legal ops professionals can use institutional data to address workplace challenges and track progress on important issues.

Law Firm Rates

Law firm rates have increased in 2020, according to law departments. When asked how overall law firm rates changed in the past year, only 3.6% of law department respondents reported any decrease. In fact, 69.7% reported an increase, while 26.8% said that rates remained flat. Participants indicated they expect this increase to continue in the next 12 months, with 46.4% expecting an increase.

There’s no reason to think these trends won’t continue for the foreseeable future. That means it’s more important than ever to be able to track invoices and ensure that your law firm’s charges are accurate and in-line with your billing guidelines. With Onit Enterprise Legal Management, you’ll have the data you need to show the value your law firms are providing to the organization in exchange for the rates they’re charging.

For more insights on the state of legal ops in 2020 and how the pandemic has impacted law department operations, you can download the entire survey here.

Four Legal AI Trends Impacting Corporate Legal Departments

Posted on January 7, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events

Each day, the accomplishments of artificial intelligence multiply. AI recently solved Schrödinger’s equation in quantum chemistry. It regularly diagnoses medical conditions, pilots jets and fetches answers for our everyday queries. And now, it might dance better than you do.

The ever-improving abilities of AI are having marked positive impacts on a wide variety of industries and professions – especially corporate legal departments and the in-house counsel and legal operations professionals that run them. So, what can corporate legal departments expect from legal AI in 2021?

Ari Kaplan, attorney, legal industry analyst, author, technologist and host of the Reinventing Professionals podcast, recently interviewed Nick Whitehouse, General Manager of the Onit AI Center of Excellence. Nick, who is the 2019 IDC DX Leader of the Year and Talent’s 2018 Most Disruptive Leader Award (as judged by Sir Richard Branson and Steve Wozniak), shared the legal AI trends that general counsel and legal operations professionals should keep an eye on for 2021, including:

  • Accelerated adoption – The pandemic has greatly affected the use of AI, spurring businesses and their corporate legal departments to recategorize it from curiosity to necessity. For example, 2020 saw many companies having to quickly reassess large numbers of contracts (such as leases). Legal AI allowed in-house teams to quickly assess their contracts and take action, helping their businesses survive and thrive.
  • Banishing the black box – Legal departments have historically been perceived as black boxes – work goes in and decisions come out slowly with little transparency. AI reduces the time spent on individual transactions, increasing transparency by enabling consistent use of playbooks and the ability for the business to self-serve.
  • Focus on solving in-house challenges  – The technology has shifted from a project-based law firm focus toward products that are centered on solving in-house problems like contract lifecycle management and AI legal contract review. With 71% of lawyers saying they are mired in manual tasks, these AI products can drive a massive amount of value for corporate legal.
  • AI in the near future – In addition to the shift from law firm focused AI services to more in-house based services, corporate legal can expect a greater blending of AI into contract lifecycle management and third-party review as well as AI-assisted document automation and billing management.

Visit the Reinventing Professionals website to listen to the podcast. You can also find it (and subscribe) on Apple podcasts.

6 Trends for Legal Tech in 2021

Posted on January 7, 2021 by - Legal Operations

It’s no exaggeration to say that the coronavirus pandemic has affected every single person and business around the world, forcing many of us to rethink what we know about how we work and the tools we need to do it – and legal tech is no exception.

The industry was already experiencing increased adoption and momentum, but the pandemic has forced both law firms and corporate legal departments to do more with less and modernize at an accelerated rate.  

Here’s a look at some of the top trends we expect to see in 2021: 

1. Remote Technology & The Talent Wars

For many, COVID-19 accelerated — and sometimes forced — the adoption of new technology in an effort to keep operations afloat. Businesses will continue to look to legal tech solutions to facilitate collaboration, eliminate man hours spent on menial tasks, measure performance of service providers, manage budgets, and more. 

The normalization of remote work has also opened the doors to a broader talent pool. Businesses are no longer restricted to just the candidates in their geographic area. They are now free to pursue the best talent – but so is everyone else, resulting in some serious talent wars. 

While we do believe physical offices will make a comeback, we foresee many businesses adopting a more hybrid approach that allows them to suit up and battle it out for the top talent. 

2. Artificial Intelligence

As legal tech looks to service more corporate legal departments to transform the tedious, manual tasks that typically waste precious time and resources, AI will become increasingly understood and less stigmatized.

Legal departments will leverage AI to deliver real-time insights, making them more efficient and effective. As we like to say at Bodhala — AI will help ‘let lawyers be lawyers!’

AI is turbocharging the legal industry and as we continue operating in a remote environment for the foreseeable future, expect to see more corporate legal departments adopt legal spend management tools, eDiscovery, contract management, and other legal tech solutions to drive their strategic initiatives,

3. Increased Focus on Data & Analytics

Data has long been the driving force of the strategic decisions in most businesses – from media to manufacturing and everything in between. It probably comes as no surprise, but legal has been a late adopter of data and analytics. But renewed focus on ‘the business of legal’ has forced a data reckoning, with both firms and corporate legal departments taking new interest in how they can leverage data to improve strategic decisions and business processes. 

In-house teams are also now demanding increased transparency from their outside counsel on everything from rates to the diversity of the timekeepers staffing their matters. This demand is driving a need for real-time data and reporting as well.

With cost optimization and diversity efforts assumed to be at the forefront of many corporate legal departments’ 2021 priorities, legal spend management solutions and data visualization tools will become even more prominent in the marketplace. 

4. Cross-Functional Collaboration

Legal departments have often had reputations for being a bottleneck when it comes to decision-making. But organizations are increasingly looking for solutions that support collaboration with legal departments to speed up, not slow down, their decision-making processes. 

In 2021, legal tech won’t just serve the legal department. It will play an integral role in cross-functional collaboration, consolidating pertinent information into one place and streamlining workflows.

For example:

  • Finance departments may leverage legal spend management solutions and eBillers to optimize their workflows, consolidate invoices, obtain data-backed insights to support budgeting/forecasting, optimize spend, or report on the health of their bottom line.
  • Sales teams will continue to benefit from legal tech tools that decrease sales cycles and simplify the process for prospects, like contract management and e-signature solutions.
  • Legal procurement teams will expand their use of data from legal spend management solutions to improve strategic spending decisions and firm selection processes.

As organizations look to become more spend-savvy, disintermediation continues to be a common trend. 

Prompted by the high rates charged by law firms even for mundane tasks or simple matters, many in-house teams are embracing a more economic and efficient solution — Alternative Legal Service Providers, or ‘ALSPs’. 

Lawyers will leverage technology to not only identify target task and matter types, but to also recommend categories that could be outsourced to ALSPs and the projected savings opportunity. 

Thanks to AI, machine learning, and a continued focus on cost optimization and efficiency, we expect ALSP adoption to hockey stick in the next few years.

6. Increased Investment, Acquisitions & Partnerships

The legal services market is a half-a-trillion dollar global industry, and like any massive market opportunity, it’s being disrupted – for the better! The opportunities to service the industry are massive – and innovation is really picking up. And along with innovation comes investment. 

2020, despite all it’s challenges, saw a huge uptick in legal tech investment – from venture capital funding to large scale acquisitions. Growth is also being driven by partnership – both technology partnerships as well as channel partnerships are on the rise. Case in point – Bodhala. In 2020 we closed our $10M A Round in March, and announced our first major partnership with Mitratech in November. 

As products and revenue accelerate growth, we anticipate interest from the investment community to continue to grow — undoubtedly making 2021 increasingly exciting! 

Looking Ahead

Though we hope that our world can slowly begin to return to normal in 2021, the events of 2020 have certainly proven the long-term value legal tech solutions can provide. 

It’s more than likely we’ll see the newly adopted practices and technologies adopted in 2020 remain in place for years to come as the legal industry has slowly unearthed the benefits technology and innovation present. 

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

What is Artificial Intelligence? The ABCs of What Is It and What it Does

Posted on January 5, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest buzzwords in legal technology today, but many people still don’t fully understand what it is and how it can impact their day-to-day legal work.

According to  Brookings Institution, AI generally refers to “machines that respond to stimulation consistent with traditional responses from humans, given the human capacity for contemplation, judgment, and intention.” In other words, artificial intelligence is technology capable of making decisions that generally require a human level of expertise. It helps people anticipate problems or deal with issues as they come up. (For example, here’s how AI greatly improves contract review.)

In this blog post and podcast (see below), we cover the ins and outs of AI in more detail. In this first installment of our new blog series, we’ll discuss what it is and its three main hallmarks.

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

At the core of AI and machine learning are algorithms, or sequences of instructions that solve specific problems. In machine learning, the learning algorithms create the rules for the software, instead of computer programmers inputting them, as is the case with more traditional forms of technology. Artificial intelligence can learn from new data without additional step-by-step instructions.

This independence is crucial to our ability to use computers for new, more complex tasks that exceed the manual programming limitations – things like photo recognition apps for the visually impaired or translating pictures into speech. Even things we now take for granted, like Alexa and Siri, are prime examples of artificial intelligence technology that once seemed impossible. We already encounter in our day-to-day lives in numerous ways and that influence will continue to grow.

The excitement about this quickly evolving technology is understandable, mainly due to its impacts on data availability, computing power and innovation. The billions of devices connected to the internet generate large amounts of data and lower the cost of mass data storage. Machine learning can use all this data to train learning algorithms and accelerate the development of new rules for performing increasingly complex tasks. Furthermore, we can now process enormous amounts of data around machine learning. All of this is driving innovation, which has recently become a rallying cry among savvy legal departments worldwide. 

Once you understand the basics of AI, it’s also helpful to be familiar with the different types of learning that make it up.

The first is supervised learning, where a learning algorithm is given labeled data in order to generate a desired output. For example, if the software is given a picture of dogs labeled “dogs,” the algorithm will identify rules to classify pictures of dogs in the future.

The second is unsupervised learning, where the data input is unlabeled and the algorithm is asked to identify patterns on its own. A typical instance of unsupervised learning is when the algorithm behind an eCommerce site identifies similar items often bought by a consumer.

Finally, there’s the scenario where the algorithm interacts with a dynamic environment that provides both positive feedback (rewards) and negative feedback. An example of this would be a self-driving car where, if the driver stays within the lane, the software will receive points in order to reinforce that learning and reminders to stay in that lane.

The Hallmarks of AI

Even after understanding the basic elements and learning models of AI, the question often arises as to what the real essence of AI is. The Brookings Institution boils the answer down to three main qualities:

  1. Intentionality – AI algorithms are designed to make decisions. They’re not passive machines capable only of mechanical or predetermined responses. Rather, they’re designed by humans with intentionality to reach conclusions based on instant analysis.
  2. Intelligence – AI often is undertaken in conjunction with machine learning and data analytics, and the resulting combination enables intelligent decision-making. Machine learning takes data and looks for underlying trends. If it spots something relevant for a practical problem, software designers can take that knowledge and employ data analytics to understand specific issues.
  3. Adaptability – AI has the ability to learn and adapt as it compiles information and makes decisions. Effective AI must adjust as circumstances or conditions shift. This could involve changes in financial situations, road conditions, environmental considerations, military circumstances, and more. Artificial intelligence needs to integrate these changes into its algorithms and decide on how to adapt to the new circumstances.

For a more in-depth discussion of artificial intelligence, you can listen to the entire podcast below.

In the next installment of our blog series, we’ll discuss the benefits AI is already bringing to legal departments. We hope you’ll join us.

 

The General Counsel’s Guide to AI Based Contract Management

Posted on December 29, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Essential Steps to Establish a Single Point of Truth

Contracts are the lifeblood of most businesses, yet too many companies lack a comprehensive and effective solution for contract lifecycle management (CLM). Legal departments looking to digitize their contracts will find the most success with a platform technology strategy that avoids creating data silos and serves as a single point of truth for all contract data. Increasingly, most enterprise businesses are looking to AI-based contract automation to help them set up automated legal contract management processes.

Prosus, a global consumer internet company and one of the largest technology investors in the world, recently implemented a new CLM system from Onit with the help of Cognia Law, an international company that helps law departments and law firms find cost-effective, process-optimized, and technology-enabled solutions. Steven Van Oss, Group Sr. Legal Council at Prosus and Tyson Ballard, Head of Legal Consulting at Cognia, recently spoke with Onit to share valuable insights on choosing and implementing the right legal AI and CLM system.

General Counsel Seeks Contract Lifecycle Management

Like many companies, Prosus initially had some technology in place for contract management, but for the most part those solutions relied on legal staff to know how everything operated. At a certain level, such an approach becomes infeasible, as employees leave or the business grows.

Other solutions proved ineffective as pain points developed after implementation. A lack of continued buy-in from colleagues in other departments quickly saw the company back at square one. They had to define their legal automation and contract management needs. They needed a solution that was easy to understand and would allow them to gain insights from the large amount of contract data they had.

The answer was to partner with Cognia to workshop a strategy for legal operations, and it immediately became clear that the legal contract management process was a major pain point. Prosus needed to get a single source of truth for contracts while standardizing processes at the same time. Cognia’s job was to help Prosus navigate the vast jungle of legal tech that exists on the market today to find the right AI-based contract management tool.

Choosing the Right AI-Based Contract Management Tool

It’s critical to understand your people and the legal contract management processes before choosing your technology. You can have the best tool on the market, but if no one actually uses it, it’s essentially worthless.

Prosus had scoured the market and gotten lost in the legal tech jungle. Cognia helped them identify their needs, creating a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves, then guided Prosus through the possibilities and potential solutions.

The right AI-based contract management tool will provide the basic foundations of contract management every legal department needs – a good repository for searching and finding contracts, the ability to import and harness data to help with decision-making and understanding risk, and the ability to generate workflows. Too many solutions focus on a lot of bells and whistles, rather than providing the necessary base functionality for CLM.

Integrations were essential to the general counsel at Prosus. While the company initially focused on their need for CLM, they quickly realized that they needed to manage their vendor compliance efforts as well. The best place to capture vendor data is in your CLM tool, since it serves as a single source of truth for that data. Prosus needed its CLM solution to integrate with ethiXbase, it’s preferred third-party compliance screening tool.

In the end, Prosus got not only its must-haves, but its nice-to-haves, too, with contract lifecycle management from Onit.

Advice for General Counsel Implementing AI-Based Contract Automation

Choosing the right CLM solution isn’t the end of the story – in reality, you’re really only halfway to the contract management goal at that point. Implementing that solution always comes with a few hurdles.

  • The first is timing. Implementation of your AI-based contract automation will almost always take longer than you think it will, since it relies on a large number of internal and external resources to complete. Add more time to your expectations. In other words, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
  • You should also be prepared to take a deep dive into all your legal contract management processes. Even day-to-day processes that may seem simple to you require an extreme level of detail to implement into your CLM tool. Chances are you’ll be thinking about the processes at a level you never even considered before.
  • Finally, it can be hard to maintain the excitement you had when you first choose your AI-based contract management solution. Throughout the implementation process, it’s important to remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing and stick with it. By keeping to a simple implementation approach, you’ll end up with both your must-haves and your nice-to-haves.

The right contract management solution can change everything for general counsel. Visit here to hear the entire discussion between Prosus, Cognia and Onit on creating a single point of truth for your legal contracts.