Author: Onit

How to Reduce Legal Hold Complexities During A Time of Zettabyte-Level Data

Posted on October 29, 2020 by - Business Process Management

As the amount of global data increases exponentially, so do the challenges related to the process of legal holds.

IDC predicts that worldwide electronic data will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025, with an average person creating and participating in up to 5,000 digital interactions a day.1 What does that amount of data look like? One publication explains it like this: “A single zettabyte will fill 1,000 datacenters or about 20% of Manhattan.”2

That’s a lot of data – especially for corporations with hundreds or thousands of employees and locations worldwide.

Now consider this amount of data in the context of a legal hold. When you combine the sheer amount of data with the fact that it exists on multiple systems, mobile devices, cloud-based solutions and in shared and private drives, it vastly complicates the process.

Yet, many companies still rely on email to manage legal holds.

Preserving Data

It’s now more important than ever to preserve electronically stored information (ESI) correctly  – especially when undergoing litigation.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37(e)3 states that:

If electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, the court:

(1) upon finding prejudice to another party from loss of the information, may order measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice; or

(2) only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation may:

(A) presume that the lost information was unfavorable to the party;

(B) instruct the jury that it may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party; or

(C) dismiss the action or enter a default judgment.

If ESI isn’t preserved in accordance to discovery, judges can impose monetary penalties or even rule against the party that lost the information.

The Importance of a Legal Holds Solution

Ideal legal holds solutions work on multiple levels. They enable corporate legal departments to notify custodians of their duty to preserve information in a timely manner while collecting and storing custodian acknowledgements, questions, preserve notices and data in a secure location. It also offers real-time tracking so team members know the status of collection requests, when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention. The tool should also create comprehensive dashboard views, allowing those involved to see when a custodian leaves an organization. From there, they can enable email archiving or suspend the destruction of data.

Automation plays a vital role in a legal holds solution. It relieves the burden of manual work with automated workflows that can be configured to match a company’s legal hold process. It also provides automatic notifications and reminders to support compliance.

Legal Holds Solution Benefits

Aside from these features, how does a legal hold solution benefit a corporate legal department?

First, they ensure compliance. Real-time dashboards, reports and audit trails ensure relevant data is collected and preserved – demonstrating that the proper care has happened to preserve and collect digital evidence. Processes supported by legal holds technology also demonstrate an appropriate level of diligence as automation reduces the chances for human error.

Next, when based on a low- or no-code platform, a legal hold solution enables a quick setup and deployment with little to no IT involvement, increasing time to value.

They also enhance overall visibility into the legal hold process, which is imperative for companies undergoing numerous cases. By being available on multiple browsers or devices, it allows easy access to information.

Finally, a legal holds solution can also reduce costs by tracking budgets and spend by matter, matter type or law firm.

Conclusion

Whether it is for one case or many, technology can reduce the complications of legal holds in today’s data-heavy business environment while minimizing risk. If you’d like to learn more about a legal holds solution, visit here.

 

1 IDC: Expect 175 zettabytes of data worldwide by 2025
2 Infographic: How Big Is a Yottabyte?
3 Discovery Sanctions under Amended Rule 37(e): A Safe(r) Harbor

 

Legal Economics: Innovation Driver or Oxymoron?

Posted on October 29, 2020 by - Legal Operations

Not all in-house lawyers handle discovery work. But the reality is that every in-house lawyer needs to take on some discovery work, no matter their area of expertise. Price discovery, that is.

The opacity of the legal services market has led corporations – especially large ones – to be routinely overcharged by their AmLaw 200 outside counsel. Not only are corporations being overcharged, their firms’ rates are growing year-over-year at an unprecedented rate. To put it in perspective, only healthcare premiums have grown more rapidly — with legal nipping at their heels. 

But why? The answer is simple: the legal services market is not an efficient economic market. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to classify it as a functional economic market at all.

Economics 101

Governed by supply and demand, a functional market economy is squarely grounded by the ability for participants to have price discovery. This allows them to assign a value to the product or service they want to purchase – and determine if the price matches that value. 

This isn’t rocket science. This concept is implicitly understood by everyone — whether they know it or not. And yet despite being a long-standing profession central to the economy, there is no true price discovery for legal services. Buyers cannot assess price in terms of value (perceived or otherwise). They cannot compare their options. Competition is restricted. It’s a mess – a mess that buyers of legal services have to wade through constantly, trying to make the best of it. 

As a result, in-house teams are left at the mercy of their law firms who cite the prestige of their brand and established client relationships as justification for their ever-increasing legal fees. In-house legal teams have little choice but to build “partnerships” with outside counsel and trust that those firms are doing right by them. 

How good is your “good deal”?

Law firms might insist you’re getting the best price – better than everyone else – but can they prove it? Rate discussions often leave in-house teams feeling uneasy and left wondering if they’re really getting as good of a deal as law firms claim – or if law firm antics are at play. 

Law firms obsess over their realization rates. So if you’ve come to an agreement on rates and think you’re getting a good deal, chances are you’re not receiving any deal at all. Why? Because law firms will do everything in their power to manipulate the realization rate for their benefit. By jacking up the number of hours recorded to yield a higher realization rate, law firms give themselves an unwarranted raise year over year.

While it has made things complicated and costly for the buy-side, law firms have thrived on the fogginess of the legal “market”. Even when met with indisputable data and pushback from their client, a leading partner at an elite law firm claimed that they could not believe the data. An for what reason? Simply because other clients were paying the firm’s rack rates, proving that “invisible hand of the market” was at play. The murky relationship between price and value and the lack of true competition on much else other than brand and reputation has certainly padded their wallets.

But despite their hefty bank accounts, it isn’t all roses and lollipops for law firms either. The lack of price discovery in the market has its ramifications for firms, directly correlating with their constant pushback on technology and change.

If no one forces you to change, why change?

The constant influx of cash incentivizes firms to maintain the status quo, stifling competition, and cutting innovation off at the knees. To say that the legal industry is in the late majority of technology adoption would be generous – they’re laggards. This has allowed new business models to start infringing on traditional law firm turf. 

Seeing an efficiency gap and firms’ unwillingness to innovate, ALSPs (Alternative Legal Services Providers) have not only cropped up but gained mainstream acceptance. Tasks – and some types of matters – that used to be billable hours for law firms are now being allocated to faster, more cost-efficient resources. 

Pressure for accountability

The gravity of market inefficiency has been heightened recently due to the global economic crisis caused by Covid-19. Historically, top tier firms have continued to enjoy constant and sometimes accelerated growth during economic downturns. But with balance sheets under more scrutiny than ever, legal spend is starting to be examined in earnest. 

GCs and CFOs across industries can no longer afford to tolerate idle price-taker behavior. 

C-suite mandates to cut costs are straining internal relationships between legal and finance, forcing legal departments to find opportunities for potential savings in each line item of their budgets. Law firm relationships are no exception. 

It’s fair to say that the legal services market is broken, hurting on both the buy- and sell-side. Corporate legal departments are saddled with year over year rate hikes well above inflation, without the tools they need to understand the value they’re getting. Work that used to constitute billable hours for law firms is being siphoned off to more economical service providers.  Overpriced and stagnant.  But does it have to be that way? 

Data: The key to a level playing-field

The simple answer is, no. There’s a treasure chest just around the corner — full of 0’s and 1’s. No, it’s not a special edition of Lucky Charms. It’s data. 

Data has the power to turn in-house teams from price-takers to price-makers. Data puts them in the driver’s seat, giving them the transparency they need to understand the value they’re getting from their firms and optimize from there – be it with rates, efficiency, or stewardship. 

Based on Bodhala platform analytics, our legal experts predict that in-house teams have the opportunity to realize between 15-30% in savings by leveraging their own data. Data is the key to unlocking competitive, market-based rates. But to truly understand if those rates are delivering the value necessary to justify the price, companies need evidence. Data is that evidence.

The legal services market is one in which nearly all buyers underestimate their leverage. In-house teams have the ability to drive real change and break through the status quo on everything from fair market pricing to increasing diversity in the industry. The buy-side is now in a position to use data to incentivize accountability and innovation from the sell-side. If your firms don’t fight for your business by pushing themselves to change, then they’re not a critical partner to your business. 

The reluctance to provide transparency and adopt technology has created a distinct advantage for the sell-side. Continuing down that path puts industry incumbents in a precarious position. 

Disruption is already here for the legal services industry. We need a functional, transparent market for legal services. Advocating for transparency and the active use of data will be the difference between those who succeed in riding the wave of change, and those who drown fighting the tide. 

The question is this: Will you embrace data and transparency before it’s too late?

—

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

Legal Department Operations: The Key to Better Partnerships Between In-House Legal Departments and Outside Counsel

Posted on October 27, 2020 by - Business Process Management

The prevalence and role of legal department operations have both expanded exponentially in recent years. While in-house legal departments once operated almost exclusively as silos within corporations, today these departments are undergoing a significant transformation in the face of expectations that they help drive their organizations’ value.

Legal operations is at the center of this transition, helping in-house departments implement the right processes, activities and staffing expansion to help grow their companies through effectively providing legal services.

“Organizations like the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium or the Association of Corporate Counsel had only had a few hundred legal operations members five years ago. Today, they count thousands of members among their ranks,” said Christine Juhasz (C.J.), head of legal operations for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. “There’s no question that legal operations professionals are connecting more as a community and, as a result, growing their skills and driving the legal operations conversation in new directions.”

That sophistication is paying off. More and more these days, law firms are actively aligning with law department legal operations to become better partners with the companies they serve. This offers many opportunities to deepen relationships between legal and business professionals, including law firm marketing and business development professionals.

In an effort to explore and foster deeper relationships with corporate legal clients, the Legal Marketing Association invited a panel of legal operations leaders to speak at its annual conference on October 22 which included C.J., Catherine Alman MacDonagh, J.D., CEO and founder of Legal Lean Sigma Institute LLC; Kate Villanueva, partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP; and Rhonda Oliver, account manager for Onit. The session, titled “How to Think Like a Legal Ops Professional,” shed light on how legal operations leaders think about engaging outside counsel.

“Legal marketers are challenged,” commented MacDonagh. “They’re the first to go through an RFP or tender papers carefully. They’re painfully aware that clients want factual information and data.”

An Innovative Approach for Stronger Legal Department Operations Partnerships

Legal department operations plays a large role in helping corporate legal departments understand processes, metrics and more. Though the struggle for law firms has historically been that they serve many clients at once, each has its own processes and ways of looking at things. By collaborating with legal operations, these firms can now map out processes for a given client much more quickly and efficiently than they could in the past, making it easier to manage several clients at the same time.

C.J. collaborated with the Legal Lean Sigma Institute to introduce Lean and Six Sigma process efficiencies into outside counsel relationships. The learning and practice of Lean principles evolved into a pilot project and then a mutually successful long-term relationship with Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath. Part of the approach included a hybrid alternative fee arrangement that combined fixed fees and hourly components.

“Most law firms don’t even know that Lean Sigma is so valuable,” explained C.J. “We got in a room and memorialized processes. It was a long-term bet on Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath’s part, and it paid dividends for them. When the firm wants to discuss rates, there’s no debate. MassMutual saves more than 12% per matter each year under the arrangement, and the firm is locking in the business.”

As MacDonagh pointed out, “There’s increased pressure on corporate legal departments. They’re being measured and looking at net promoter scores internally. They need to be ever more efficient, and that trend will only continue. A collaborative approach to improving processes like this gives a law firm competitive advantages. If you’re a legal marketer or in business development, you’re uniquely positioned to help your firm emerge from this pandemic in an even better position. You should be approaching your clients with ideas like these and not waiting to be asked.”

The result of the Legal Lean Sigma approach was a powerful partnership between MassMutual and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath that never would even have been attempted five years ago. It also earned MassMutual a 2019 ACC Value Champion award and serves as a model for firms looking to better partner with the in-house departments they serve.

Technology and Transformation

Technology has also been at the forefront of transformations like these. Systems such as platforms and enterprise legal management enable legal department operations to capture, manage and report on valuable data.

“In the overall scheme of legal operations in achieving its objectives with less, technology has increasingly played a prominent role. Driving efficiencies and controlling costs in the legal department are being borne, to a significant degree, by well-chosen technology,” said Oliver.

Legal Department Operations Resources

Legal operations is critical to building solid partnerships with law firms in today’s legal market. Here are additional resources from the presenters for those who wish to learn more about legal operations management:

 

Meet the Hackers Who Are Reengineering Legal Operations Technology

Posted on October 26, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Are you ready for a friendly legal operations technology competition? These legal leaders raised their hands and said, “Hack, yeah!”

Two weeks ago, we announced our new hackathon: Hack the House.

The competition unites Onit customers, partners and staff to re-imagine legal operations technology. With the no-code Onit Apptitude platform, they’re creating Apps to address real challenges faced by corporate legal departments.

The competition, held in conjunction with Cosmonauts, welcomes five teams, including Team IP, Team HR, Team Europe, Team Diversity and Team Pro Bono. Each team has three weeks to identify a problem, define requirements and build the solution.

Winners will be determined by public voting (sign up here to get the notices) and a judging panel of in-house legal leaders that features:

  • Kristi Anne Gedid, Sr. Director Global Legal Operations, Mylan
  • Mary Shirley, Head of Culture of Integrity and Compliance Education, Fresenius
  • Maria Anassutzi, Legal IP Counsel EMEA, Canon Europe
  • William Hayes, Senior Lawyer, BBC
  • Jonathan Powers, Director of Learning and Development, Onit

Voting opens in December, with winners announced before the end of the year.

Ready to meet the legal and business experts, certified App Builders and project managers blazing a new trail for legal operations technology? Let’s do it.

Team Europe

Our team overseas is packed with talent. Led by Robert Johnson, Onit’s managing director (you may have seen his spirited series on Legaltech101), the team also has:

  • Ed (Eduardo) Rastelli, Legal Consultant at Standard Chartered Bank
  • Lee Harrison, Senior Developer – Legal Systems at BT Group
  • Alyssa Kokilah, Legal Consultant at Cognia Law
  • Claire Banham, Associate Director Sales Engineer at Onit
  • Tyler Reno, Sales Engineer at Onit

Team IP

Team IP brings some real heavy hitters together to combat legal operations inefficiencies for intellectual property. It includes:

  • Matt (Matthew) Burdman, Global Legal Organization and finance manager at Colgate-Palmolive
  • Ken Capece, Manager, Patent and GLO Operations at Colgate-Palmolive
  • Larry (Lawrence) Gianneschi, Director, Legal Technology at Colgate-Palmolive
  • Nadine Stuttle, Managing Director at Duff & Phelps
  • Rebecca Cotton, Analyst at Duff & Phelps
  • Atlantis Langowski, Account Manager at Onit
  • Josie Johnson, Marketing Director at Onit

Team HR

HR and legal go together like Jobs and Wozniak (well, in the early days). This team of pros will identify a critical HR/legal challenge and take it down with technology. Members include:

  • Curtis Batterton, Legal Operations & Global Technology Manager at McDonald’s Corporation
  • Chris Hultgren, Business Analyst – Global IT HR at Deere & Company
  • Weston Wicks, Director of Legal Technology Implementations at Morae Global
  • Brett Baccus, Managing Director at Morae Global
  • Dipesh Parmar, Sr. Associate at Morae Global
  • David Duffey, Account Manager at Onit

Team Diversity

From CEOs to GC, businesses are prioritizing diversity. This team of legal ops leaders will streamline and automate a critical diversity-related process to further this initiative. Working on this team are:

  • Eric Kabot, Director, Senior Associate Counsel at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
  • Michele Compasso, Legal Ops Consultant at Corteva Agriscience™
  • Gregg McConnell, Legal Operations Leader at Corteva Agriscience™
  • Sam Lu Consilio, Lisa Morris and Debby Young for Consilio
  • Jesse Viani, Regional Sales Director and Senior Account Manager at Onit
  • Rhonda Oliver, Account Manager at Onit

Team Pro Bono

And finally, our final team includes these talented individuals working on a solution to track an organization’s pro bono legal efforts:

  • Nick Panagoplos, Manager at Chubb
  • Kim Takacs, VP of Corporate Real Estate at Chubb
  • Massimo Penzo, Sr. Consultant at Morae
  • Paige Edwards, Director of Customer Experience at Onit

We’ll have more updates as Hack the House continues. Sign up for the latest news on these teams’ progress. Good luck to everyone!

Advice from Travel and Hospitality Legal Operations Leaders on How to Address Pandemic Challenges

Posted on October 22, 2020 by - Company News and Events

The U.S. Travel Industry estimates that travel spending is now 41% lower than last year at this time, representing a $9.1 billion loss. These losses are not a surprise, considering the rise of social distancing and stay-at-home orders. People have canceled vacation plans, including flights, hotels, cruises and more – resulting in $415 billion in cumulative losses for the U.S. travel economy. Restrictions resulting from the pandemic will have an even larger impact globally, with one study claiming that worldwide tourism revenues may take a $3.4 trillion hit.

Travel and hospitality legal departments face challenging times as their companies react, rethink and reset. Now more than ever is a time for legal operations professionals to connect and compare strategies and experiences.

On October 7, Onit and HBR Consulting held a virtual discussion with corporate legal department leaders in these industries to hear how they have been impacted by COVID-19, what changes they are planning for the short and long term and how lessons from this crisis will inform their approach to legal issues in the future.

The panelists, moderated by Kevin Clem, Chief Commercial Officer for HBR Consulting , included:

  • Fred Headon, Assistant General Counsel – Labour and Employment Law for Air Canada
  • Eric Kabot, Senior Associate Counsel of Royal Caribbean
  • Saumil Mehta, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of Gogo Air

The webinar, titled Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments, is now available for on-demand viewing. It is one in a series of Onit’s online learning program for legal operations professionals called Lean Into LegalOps.

Pivots, Cross-Collaboration and More

No matter what impact the pandemic has on your company, the discussion offers valuable insight into navigating through unexpected changes.

Eric Kabot shared how Royal Caribbean’s corporate legal department has undergone staff reductions and now accomplishes more with fewer resources. As a result, the team has shifted from focusing on their respective functional areas prior to the pandemic to a cross-collaborative environment. Fred Headon of Air Canada described how they pivoted their business model on several fronts and how this change has affected the company and its legal operations. Saumil Mehta also said his company, Gogo Air, has changed course as well and emphasized the importance of partnerships and creativity in trying times. According to him, products from Onit helped when the pandemic hit – especially since they had to start working from home.

To hear more from the speakers, you can watch the recorded webinar here.

More Learning Opportunities for Corporate Legal Operations

Onit’s fall series for Lean Into LegalOps continues with more timely learning exchanges, including:

  • Virtual Legal Resourcing Debate with Buying Legal Council, where three debate teams present scenarios to their hypothetical general counsel, who has asked for options to reduce expenses related to outside counsel. (Wednesday, November 18 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. CST).
  • The GC’s Guide to Contracts and a Single Point of Truth, as Prosus explains its digitalization initiative and platform technology strategy to improve legal operations. (Thursday, December 10 |  2:00 p.m. BST / 8:00 a.m. CST)

You can register for these events and hear past ones here.

4 Core Benefits of the Leading Enterprise Legal Management Solutions

Posted on October 20, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s fast-paced and quickly evolving business environment, corporate counsel and legal department professionals want to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. One of the best ways to do this is by automating manual processes with enterprise legal management solutions.

Manual processes are sneaky. They manage to irritate most knowledge workers but don’t always provoke a full-fledged resistance. The work has to get done, so the processes – which often include manual components – have to be completed as well.

However, the time spent on manual process accumulates drastically during a week. According to this survey, over 40% of workers spend at least 25% of their week on repetitive tasks and nearly 60% say they could save six or more hours a week with automation.

A Modern Approach to Enterprise Legal Management

Modern enterprise legal management solutions are systems of engagement, built on a platform that can easily accommodate new Apps and solutions to handle evolving business process needs. They employ automation, such as the review of documents and assigning tasks, to help law departments better serve their businesses while improving operational efficiency. While they provide valuable matter management and legal spend management, they aren’t limited to those solutions. The one-two punch of a platform combined with automation offers a  foundation for current and future needs, accommodating solutions such as contract lifecycle management, legal holds, Apps and more.

With this in mind, here are four simple, core benefits that an enterprise legal management solution can provide.

  1. Maximize Savings

Process automation with an enterprise legal management solution can cut operating costs by up to 90%, while at least 45% of current paid activities can be automated. It allows you to easily manage, track and analyze legal spend to minimize company risk and exposure. With these tools, legal departments can create visibility into spend and a strategy to manage it going forward.

  1. Increase Efficiency

An enterprise legal management solution drives process improvements in all areas of legal operations. It helps corporate legal realize more efficiency with reduced billing error fees, increases productivity and reduces time spent on matter management. Optimal enterprise legal management solutions are simple to configure, easy to deploy and address complex everyday problems.

  1. Enhance Collaboration

Collaborative tools are proven to have a high impact on businesses, regardless of department size or geographic location – especially now with a rise in remote working. A solution that supports and tracks the multiple contributions often associated with each piece of legal work improves collaboration between internal and external stakeholders. It also encourages greater collaboration across the enterprise, as corporate legal departments automate intake and speed response times with HR, procurement, compliance, marketing and more. Two items offered by modern enterprise legal management solutions enable all of this. First, they provide a consistent and familiar App-based interface, thanks to the platform. Second, a platform that allows unlimited users encourages higher usage and adoption in-house, across departments and with outside counsel.

  1. Simplify Work

With automation, enterprise legal management software streamlines the way lawyers and their legal staff work and get work into the department. It integrates data-driven decision making into standard work processes. It also offers an App-based approach to legal operations that breaks complex tasks into individual, task-based solutions and processes. Both elements simplify work drastically.

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of enterprise legal management solutions, here are some helpful resources:

How DaVita’s Corporate Legal Department Stays Synced with Evolving Business Needs

Posted on October 15, 2020 by - Business Process Management

In its 23rd annual CEO survey, PwC found 83% of U.S. CEOs prioritize operational efficiencies to drive growth over the next 12 months. The pandemic has forced many businesses to reassess and pivot quickly – meaning that corporate legal departments have had to do the same to stay aligned with strategic initiatives. At the same time, they want to enact change and accommodate new workflows efficiently.

How can a corporate legal department enhance efficiency while quickly adapting to changing business needs? According to Daniel Lee, Director of Legal Operations – Technology & Analytics at DaVita, you need Apps. In this on-demand webinar, he shares how DaVita has invested in building apps to support what he calls “the other lanes” in the corporate legal department. As a result, they’ve streamlined workflows and accelerated change management for areas such as marketing intake and conflict waiver tracking.

Before and After Apps

For example, he describes the “before and after” of their process for reviewing marketing materials. Before, the legal team created and worked from color-coded spreadsheets and email tags – a process that demanded a lot of valuable time to maintain. The company’s legal operations team saw an opportunity to increase efficiency. Working with Onit’s workflow and business process automation platform as the foundation, they built a marketing intake process App. Marketers can request legal review online, uploading information needed for review. Then, the App automated the process, capturing work product, redlines and more. It also gave them weekly reports that help them calculate the type of work associated with these projects.

As a result, Daniel reported that they expect enhanced task management and collaboration, knowledge is stored in a system instead of shared mailboxes, metric generation is simplified and distribution automated.

A Platform Advantage

This is one example of how DaVita has increased efficiency. With Onit Apptitude as its technology platform, the corporate legal department has combined the power of an enterprise legal management solution with the ability to launch Apps to solve critical business challenges quickly. As a result, they can configure their workflows to their specific needs and data and reports are consolidated in one place to make reporting easier and more meaningful.

Apptitude minimizes the need for technical resources. It bridges the gap between technical and business users, providing a no-code platform and a visual drag-and-drop workflow builder with an intuitive visual interface for building and managing workflows. Plus, it allows an unlimited number of users, meaning other departments and contacts can use any Apptitude-powered app without having to incur costs.

In this recorded webinar, you can hear Daniel share the corporate legal department’s vision for enterprise legal management and how they use a platform and apps to supercharge efficiency.

Lean Into LegalOps

The DaVita webinar is one in a series of virtual learning and networking titled Lean Into LegalOps. The program, available in both the U.S. and Europe, brings Onit customers and the greater in-house legal community together to share experiences, lessons and successes through formal webinars, virtual discussions, customer demonstrations and more informal check-in calls. Join Lean Into LegalOps today to get periodic updates on upcoming events and new content, as well as invitations to the virtual events and bi-monthly check-in calls.

 

Are Legal Operations Professionals Ready to Hack the House? Hack, Yeah!

Posted on October 13, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The next time you’re tapping your iPhone or reviewing a contract on your MacBook Pro, you might want to thank hackathons.

In 1975, the Homebrew Computer Club met for the first time in Menlo Park, California. The group of technology enthusiasts – a group credited as the originator of hackathons – united to talk shop and Altair 8800, swap parts and share information on how to DIY computers. Members influenced by the club included … wait for it … Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who credited the organization with inspiring Apple’s founding.

Hackathons organized more concretely in 1999, with groups collaborating on cryptographic software and a program for Palm Vs. Throughout the years, hackathons have grown in size and frequency, creating companies including GroupMe and Zapier and finding new ways to solve problems. For example, one hackathon focused on discovering how digital technologies can support the epilepsy community. There’s even a company that operates a league for student hackathons.

What’s a Hackathon?

We hear the word a lot. While some may be quite familiar with it, others may not. So let’s define it. Hackathon is a meshing of “hack” and “marathon.” In a general sense, it’s a collaborative group that works together to solve problems using technology.  For example, Onit united with Consilio and Adobe earlier this year to create the Evergreen Donation Emergency Network (EDEN) for a hackathon to solve complex COVID-19 problems. The app, built on Onit Apptitude (a workflow and business process automation platform), connects donors with excess supplies to organizations in need. You can view the EDEN demo here.

Who can Participate?

Hackathons aren’t just for coders. The best results come when people with different strengths and backgrounds are involved. They bring their perspective to the project, which creates stronger results. For example, coders can build a workflow to solve a problem. Still, you need people with intimate knowledge of (for example) the corporate legal operations or process experts to ensure you get the best outcome.

Hack the House

Now, Onit continues to foster innovation with the launch of a new hackathon: Hack the House.

Sign up for Hack the House updatesHack the House, a collaboration with Cosmonauts, is a friendly competition between Onit customers, partners and staff to see who can build the most useful and compelling workflow and collaboration solution using Onit Apptitude.

Each team consists of legal and business experts, certified App Builders and project managers. The teams will have three weeks of virtual hackathon time to identify a challenge to solve, define requirements and build the solution.

Hack the House has of five teams, with each one focused on a particular challenge theme: Team IP, Team HR, Team Europe, Team Diversity and Team Pro Bono.

Once each team builds its solution, the Onit sales engineering team will help them put together a demo story and short video to highlight the solution’s strengths. A judging panel of in-house legal leaders and a public vote open to everyone will determine the winner.

That’s right – you can vote on which team should win. To keep tabs on the hackathon’s project, sign up for updates here. You’ll want to sign up soon because the team members will be released next week.

We’ll announce the winner in early December. Good luck to all the teams!

Workflow and Business Process Automation for Corporate Legal Operations

Corporate legal departments have used Onit Apptitude for years to build innovative solutions to solve enterprise challenges. More than 5,500 apps and 130 solutions have been built on Apptitude, with varying uses such as enterprise legal management, automating the TREAD reporting process and managing the necessary business processes, reviews and approvals for the transfer of assets between portfolio companies. You can read about all the different ways corporate legal has leaned on Apptitude here.

Remember, sign up for Hack the House updates. You’ll be hearing more soon!

The Women, Influence & Power Summit: Furthering Diversity in the Legal Community

Posted on October 9, 2020 by - Company News and Events

General counsel want diversity from their law firms – and they’ll prioritize business based on that.

More than 170 general counsel and corporate legal executives from companies such as Google Fiber, Lyft and Heineken USA signed an open letter stating this in 2019. An excerpt reads:

“We expect the outside law firms we retain to reflect the diversity of the legal community and the companies and the customers we serve.” 

The statement validated the work of law firms focused on providing actionable results in support of diversity. It also served as a warning to those law firms slow to respond.

In December of 2019, the Vault/Minority Corporate Counsel Association Law Firm Diversity Survey results found that:

“Law firm populations are slowly becoming more diverse, although demographic changes have been slow to trickle upward, and firms continue to struggle with retention of diverse attorneys, particularly people of color. More women serve as partners and law firm leaders than in the past, although they have yet to achieve gender parity, and women of color enjoy fewer of these successes than their white colleagues.”

Diversity is a top priority for corporate legal, both for their departments and their outside counsel. The commitment started well before 2019 and will continue going forward as the legal community collaborates to build more diverse law firms and corporate legal departments.

Women, Influence & Power in Law

The annual summit Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) has continually propelled awareness, interest and action to support diversity. For more than a decade, the conference has united prominent women in law to drive meaningful conversations and actionable solutions surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion within the legal community. This year’s virtual gathering, scheduled for October 26-30, will be no exception, with keynotes from luminaries Tina Chen, President and CEO of the “Time’s Up” Legal Defense Fund and former chief of staff to Michelle Obama and Paula Boggs, founder of Boggs Media, LLC and executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, law and corporate affairs at Starbucks Corporation from 2002 to 2012.

Onit is proud to sponsor and participate in this year’s event.

Stasha Jain, vice president of legal and compliance for Onit, will host a roundtable session titled “Beyond Artificial Intelligence: The Future Of In House Legal Teams” on October 27 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. EST. Stasha has practiced law for more than 15 years, with in-house counsel experience at Onit, ZS Associates, Inc. and Hewitt Associates. The session will take a candid look at how in-house teams will transform in the near future and how technology can influence that change.

WIPL is free for in-house counsel and open to legal professionals who support diversity in the legal community. Visit here to register.

While you’re at the event, be sure to “stop by” to say hello to Onit via the Exhibitor Directory. If you join us for a demo, we’ll buy you lunch – or rather, a DoorDash gift card that you can use to treat yourself at your favorite restaurant. Even better: In addition to the gift card, those that watch a demo will have a chance to win a unique virtual foodie experience. We’re waiting until the conference to share more details. But trust us – this is worth it!

Continue the Diversity Discussion

Onit’s Lean Into LegalOps program hosts roundtable discussions every other week for legal operations professionals. One recurring topic will be diversity. If you’d like to join these roundtable calls and continue the diversity discussion, sign up for Lean Into LegalOps and you’ll get notifications of new events.

Houston Business Journal Names Onit to the Fast 100 and Inaugural Middle Market 50

Posted on October 6, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Once more, Onit is excited to announce that it has been recognized for its rapid revenue growth – this time (or rather, these two times) by the Houston Business Journal.

Onit grew its revenue by 271.51% from 2017-2019, earning a spot on the Houston Business Journal’s Fast 100 and Middle Market 50. This wouldn’t be possible without our outstanding customers as well as our employees’ dedication to innovation and excellent customer experiences.

We landed at #9 on the Fast 100 list, which ranks the fastest-growing companies in the Greater Houston area. This is the fourth year Onit has appeared on this list.

For the inaugural Middle Market 50 awards, Onit ranked #3. The list highlights the fastest-growing, top-50 for-profit public and private midmarket companies based in Houston.

The Houston Business Journal interviewed CEO Eric M. Elfman about the company’s rapid growth, which he attributed to many things including:

2020 Awards for Onit

This has been an active year for Onit awards. We’ve won more than 10 so far this year in addition to the Fast 100 and Middle Market 50. Many of these awards are linked to the company’s cumulative growth and increased revenue over multiple years. Inc. included Onit on its Inc. 5000 (#737) and 250 Fastest Growing Companies in Texas (#70) as well as its Private Titans list, which names the 1,000 largest iconic private companies in America. The Financial Times placed Onit as #153 on its 500 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Americas award and Growjo ranked it as #16 on its 10K Fastest-Growing Companies in Texas.

Again, thank you to our customers and employees who made this recognition possible.