Author: Onit

Pearson PLC, Onit and Morae Shortlisted for the 2020 Legal Innovation Awards

Posted on July 21, 2020 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management

Congratulations are in order for Pearson PLC, who has won recognition for its innovative work in legal operations. The company has landed on the shortlist of the Legal Innovation Awards 2020 in the category of “Future of Legal Services Innovation – In-House Legal Operations.”

Pearson PLC, a global learning company, created a transformational shared service center to support commercial transactions worldwide for more than 10,000 users. Powered by an integrated solution from Onit and its partner Morae, Pearson achieved a 30 percent improved contract turnaround time.

The nomination, which also names Onit and Morae, illustrates the unlimited potential for innovation when corporate legal departments team with trusted technology partners. Pearson selected Morae to assist in developing, implementing and operating an innovative, highly-efficient Transaction Service Center as an extension of Pearson’s legal team in support of the company’s businesses worldwide. Onit provided the contract lifecycle management technology and Apptitude platform to drive automation, greater standardization, ease of access to information, and increased process transparency.

 This is the second time the company has been recognized for its transformative initiative. The Association of Corporate Counsel named Pearson a 2020 ACC Value Champion earlier this year. The prestigious prize showcases innovative law departments that embrace creative, data-driven solutions to streamline operations.

About the 2020 Legal Innovation Awards

The 2020 Legal Innovation Awards, hosted by Law.com International UK, Legal Week, celebrates the outstanding achievements of law firms, chambers, in-house legal departments and alternative business structures. The winners will be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on Oct. 2 at 5 p.m. BST. You can register for virtual attendance here and tweeting is encouraged during the proceedings with the hashtag #legalinnovationawards.

Hear about the Innovative Project from Pearson, Morae and Onit  

Robert Mignanelli, SVP, Associate General Counsel, Global Product/Technology at Pearson plc, sat down to discuss this award-winning initiative in this on-demand webinar. Mignanelli is joined by Joy Saphla, President, Morae Legal of Morae Global Corporation and Matt DenOuden, VP, Global Sales of Onit to share details about the journey to move from a highly bespoke legal services model into a more standardized and streamlined way of delivering support to the business.

Once more, congratulations to Pearson!

5 Areas of Law and Contract Management Becoming More Relevant in the Age of COVID-19

Posted on July 17, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

No matter what industry you’re in, there’s no doubt that COVID-19 is changing both the way work gets done and how workers spend their time in the legal sphere — especially in the contract management arena. The pandemic has impacted the global economy, our healthcare systems, insurance claims, the prevalence of remote work and more.

Lawyers are busier than ever in this “new normal;” however, the kinds of legal contract reviews they are conducting are shifting.

Here are five practice areas that are becoming even more relevant in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Bankruptcy/Restructuring

Recent headlines have been filled with news of Chapter 11 bankruptcies, including J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew, 24 Hour Fitness and many more. According to Epiq Systems Inc., Chapter 11 business bankruptcy filings increased 26% in the first half of this year, and U.S. courts recorded a total of 3,604 business filings for Chapter 11 protection, an unfortunate side effect of the pandemic. Lawyers are doing more work with debtors, creditors, equity interest holders and other entities that may be interested in a business (such as a prospective acquirer) that is confronting financial difficulties.

Health Law  

This varied area of legal practice encompasses a range of transactional and regulatory matters, including mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures for healthcare entities. Other work may include litigation concerning healthcare clients, enforcing governmental health and FDA regulations, conducting internal investigations and assisting with technology transactions, IP and data privacy. Digital health practices are constantly changing, and lawyers are keeping pace with the many legal changes that accompany the technological advances and regulatory updates the healthcare industry is experiencing during this pandemic and beyond.

Insurance

While the safety of employees and customers is on the forefront of company’s minds, mitigating financial losses that have come with COVID-19 so that they can continue to operate is another huge priority. Risk managers, in-house counsel and internal crisis management teams continue to pore over their insurance policies (i.e., first-party property insurance, cancellation insurance, etc.) to determine whether there is existing coverage to offset losses and liabilities. Legal teams are pulled into the mix when litigation is needed to resolve a dispute over coverage terms.

Employment

Lawyers in the employment arena represent companies or individuals in labor and employment disputes, draft policies and procedures, advise on union issues including unfair labor practice and discrimination charges, review employment and separation contracts, etc. Legal topics that are coming up more than ever before as the world grapples with coronavirus include issues of confidentiality, disability-related inquiries, health coverage, paid sick leave, reduction in force and more.

Privacy and Data Security  

This certainly isn’t a new area of law; the 2018 introduction of the GDPR in the European Union has affected the way companies do business globally. As both private companies and governments explore different ways to combat and prevent the spread of COVID-19, data collection and analysis of health and location information have become key tools. However, there is a balance that must be maintained between personal privacy rights and public well-being, a prime subject of newly proposed federal privacy legislation. While this legislation is being drafted, companies are taking steps to ensure that they are minimizing the collection of employee data to only what is reasonably necessary as well as utilize cybersecurity solutions to protect their employee and client data

Artificial Intelligence and Contract Management

As the M&A work, insurance disputes, employee settlements, new privacy policies, etc., pile up on lawyers’ desks, there is more pressure than ever before to be efficient and mitigate risk to the company.

That’s why more legal teams are using contract management solutions powered by legal AI to get their work done, including ReviewAI, our contract management tool.

ReviewAI is a Microsoft Word Add-in that enables lawyers to be 51.5% more productive. This contract management system provides more consistency in the contract review process by alerting the user when language and legal clauses don’t match corporate standards. Users can also leverage any of our immediately available contract review templates created by subject matter experts in areas such as employment, dispute settlement, confidentiality, data privacy and more. Learn how ReviewAI can transform your contract management lifecycle here.

Legal Operations: How Legal Departments are Pivoting due to COVID

Posted on July 17, 2020 by - Legal Operations

This afternoon, Bodhala participated in Consero’s Legal Operations virtual conference.

Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led legal operations leaders across industries through a series of conversations on how to drive impact within their legal departments amidst COVID, the techniques legal departments are implementing to adjust for the future and save money, and how in-house teams can push their diversity initiatives both internally and externally.

Here are our key takeaways:

Data is driving how law firms are managed.

Finance is closely tracking legal spend.

  • As companies continue to grapple with the economic effects of COVID, it’s no surprise that finance departments are examining invoices and legal spend with heightened scrutiny. The pressure to cut costs is on as attendees noted increased interaction with their finance teams, sharing that every nickel and dime going out the door is being tracked and invoices over a specific cost threshold are being questioned. Learn about Bodhala’s suggested techniques for handling law firm payables during COVID.

Diversity standards are being set internally and externally.

Bodhala’s Insights

Whether you’re looking to cut costs, improve your department’s decision-making process, or drive key diversity initiatives – are you armed with the data needed to do so?

Bodhala is reimagining the legal services market place by providing legal market intelligence, insights, and guidance to corporations to optimize their legal operations. 

From top timekeepers to average hourly rates, and everything in between, all you need to know about your outside counsel spend and law firm staffing is housed in your data. 

Bodhala equips you with the data needed to hire the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.

Our platform’s insights have enabled clients to initiate data-driven conversations both internally and externally. With Bodhala, corporate legal departments have the power to justify their objections, negotiations, and decisions as they relate to legal spend, law firm selection, and diversity goals.

Bodhala’s Resources 

We’re here to help you find efficiencies in your company’s legal spend – speak with a Bodhala legal expert about legal spend management tactics.

How to Work through Legal Operations Challenges as a Community

Posted on July 16, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

How do you get through challenging times? Most likely, with a little help from your friends.

The COVID-19 pandemic has critically changed work as we know it. Companies closed offices and employees switched to work from home. A decentralized workforce brought new challenges like the complexities of remote access and virtual collaboration. Businesses had to pivot immediately and reexamine strategies and budgets. As a result, corporate legal departments faced a renewed need for efficiency and cost savings.

It is now more important than ever to connect with your peers and leaders within legal operations. Sharing experiences can inspire and highlight innovative approaches to today’s challenges.

That why we created Lean into LegalOps.

The online learning initiative, offered at no cost and open to all legal operations professionals, connects thousands of Onit and SimpleLegal customers, in-house counsel, technology experts and more. To date, leading legal operations executives from McDonald’s, BT and Colgate-Palmolive have shared their experiences with timely topics such as:

  • How to use workflow tools to manage a distributed workforce
  • Implementing technology strategies that deliver immediate cost savings and ROI
  • Quantifying and defending the value of a legal department
  • Change management best practices in a challenging environment

The program also offers regular peer discussion groups, with members tackling top priorities and providing insight into how to address them.

The positive response to Lean into LegalOps inspired us to extend the program into Europe. Robert Johnson, the managing director of Onit’s London office, discusses Lean into LegalOps Europe and the state of legal operations in Europe here.

We invite you to view these on-demand recordings at your convenience. Hear how our customers have successfully realized cost savings and enhanced efficiency during these troubled times.

Get invitations and links to future presentations and peer-to-peer discussion groups by joining Lean into LegalOps or Lean into LegalOps Europe.

New for Onit Clients: Enhanced Global Scalability with Amazon Web Services  

Posted on July 14, 2020 by - Company News and Events

New for Onit clients: Enhanced Global Scalability with Amazon Web Services  

Onit is pleased to announce that we’ve added Amazon Web Services (AWS) to our infrastructure. The new architecture will easily align with our clients’ business needs worldwide, regardless of size or capacity. Clients will have the industry’s best reliability, with AWS designed with fault tolerance and high availability as the core objectives.

Chris Fields, chief technology officer at Onit, talked more in-depth about the project on a recent podcast. He explained that 100% of the company’s clients are now on AWS and shared an example of how this positively impacts them:

“One of the most common aspects of the enterprise legal management space is that corporate legal departments need more capacity at their quarters’ ends. When those times come, we can quickly spin up capacity within minutes to support their needs and then back it off automatically.”  

 Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world. Among its many features are agility, flexibility and security. The elastic computing AWS architecture allows Onit and its clients to scale effortlessly, globally and on-demand.

“A large number of our clients are familiar with Amazon Web Services themselves and they’re reaching out to explore how we can leverage the technology together. Many clients also have seen our fast growth and appreciate that we are investing in infrastructure,” he said.

The transition resulted in zero downtime, thanks to a sizeable Onit team devoted to the project. As Chris joked, “We go ‘all hands on deck’ for big projects here at Onit. There were so many people to thank I had to make a video with Star Wars credits.”

Listen to Chris’s interview below to hear more about Onit, Amazon Web Services and other technology projects in progress. You can also learn more by reading the company’s press release covering this news.

 

5 Must-Have Features to Supercharge Enterprise Legal Management

Posted on July 9, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Enterprise legal management (ELM) has come a long way since its introduction years ago. Before ELM, paper ruled almost every aspect of legal operations – from matter intake to bill submissions. As a result, the processes that powered critical legal operations workflows often lacked visibility and efficiency.

Now, with the cloud and other advances in technology, ELM solutions give corporate legal departments the ability to drive meaningful business improvements and cost savings.

How can you improve and drive even more ROI from enterprise legal management?

Concentrate on creating better workflows.

The very best ELM solutions represent a new paradigm changing the legal operations landscape. They drastically improve the delivery of legal services, allowing the exploration and definition of critical legal business processes.

By streamlining and automating essential workflows, an ELM solution also offers a true system of engagement. Users can immediately see the benefits, encouraging them to adopt it in higher numbers. With these supercharged workflows, the efficiencies will multiply from there.

With this in mind, here are five features critical to workflows that will take your ELM results to the next level.

  1. Workflow capabilities that match business requirements and are simple to change, alter or adjust. Different work types, such as matters related to employment, litigation, or mergers, have unique workflows that an ELM solution should accommodate.
  2. Comprehensive visibility into invoices at every stage, including submission, review and approval
  3. A single, secure platform for collaboration that captures notes, documents, attachments and email communications
  4. Reporting and dashboard views that make it easy to analyze invoices, evaluate performance against budget and see trends across your matter portfolio
  5. The ability to be highly configurable for a legal department’s needs, offering seamless integrations with important systems such as accounts payable, document management, IP management and other back-end systems

If you’re interested in hearing how corporate legal departments have supercharged their legal operations, consider joining the Onit Lean into LegalOps program for the U.S. or Europe. The online learning initiative offers educational presentations and virtual discussions from innovators and industry thought leaders.

Two examples of Lean into LegalOps events include:

Onit Contributes to Crisis Effort by Powering the Evergreen Donation Emergency Network

Posted on July 8, 2020 by - Company News and Events

What do you get when uniting innovative legal professionals, software developers, designers, and business people? Meaningful solutions during a challenging time.

FT Innovative Lawyers, supported by Global Legal Hackathon, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), and the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), launched an initiative earlier this year to solve complex COVID-19 problems. Within less than a month, legal innovators had to identify challenges, build teams, and launch solutions to support communities, governments, and organizations.

Thousands around the world responded to the call to action, including Onit.

Together with Consilio and Adobe, Onit technologists tackled the task of quickly rerouting excess food supply to food banks. COVID-19 has exacerbated the complications of food logistics, hindering markets and food banks from supporting those suffering from hunger insecurity – especially during a surge in demand.

The result: EDEN.

The Evergreen Donation Emergency Network, built on the Onit platform Apptitude, connects donors with excess supplies to organizations in need. Although created with the idea of tackling food supply challenges, the team expanded its capabilities to include all types of potential donations including medical supplies, clothing, and even volunteers. Using EDEN, event coordinators, suppliers, and transporters connect to plan and execute donations. This project also highlights how Onit’s Apptitude platform can create real change in the world, even in the worst of times. You can view the EDEN demo here.

Congratulations to the Onit, Consilio, and Adobe teams!

How the Cloud Impacts Corporate Legal Operations

Posted on July 2, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

When it comes to the cloud, efficiency, and automation, companies may not have to look far for corporate legal operations inspiration. According to Jed Cawthorne, director of security and governance solutions at NetDocuments, legal knowledge management teams and IT offer examples that corporate legal can reference.

As he explained in this recorded Onit webinar presentation, legal knowledge management has over a decade of experience with leveraging collaboration technology, electronic form libraries, intranets, and search applications. IT has made great strides in operations as well. Many IT departments have adopted cloud-based workflow management platforms for submitting requests, assigning jobs, and tracking progress – all to automate tasks and create efficient working environments.

Jed draws from a wealth of experience when it comes to the cloud and legal operations. He has 20 years of experience in information and knowledge management, including document management systems, intranets, and collaboration. He also spent almost five years as director of knowledge management in the legal, corporate, and compliance group at the Bank of Montreal. NetDocuments, an Onit Strategic Alliances Partner, has more than 2,750 enterprise customers worldwide and offers a cloud-based content services and productivity platform that includes document management, email management, and collaboration technology.

In the recording of the webinar, titled “The Impact of Cloud on Legal Operations,” Jed discussed:

  • Questions concerning high-quality service delivery at lower costs using the cloud
  • How efficiency impacts a corporate legal department, including individual attorneys and the department on a whole
  • Examples of how the cloud drives ROI in a corporate legal department

The webinar is part of Onit’s Lean into LegalOps, an online learning initiative that connects legal operations innovators and industry thought leaders. The program recently featured a virtual discussion with BT and Buying Legal Council on optimizing resources inside and outside the legal department and a discussion lead by Pearson, Onit, and Morae on transforming legal services delivery and enabling self-service.

We hope you’ll take some time to view the NetDocuments webinar and discover more about Onit by clicking on the resources below.

8 Crucial Items for Your Procurement ReviewAI Checklist

Posted on July 1, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

No matter what company you work for or which industry you’re part of, procurement contract review is likely part of your daily life as a member of the legal team. Whether it’s ordering basic office supplies to keep your workplace running or more complicated like buying raw materials in bulk for multiple products, you should have a procurement process in place to make the purchasing process move smoothly.

Procurement is an important element of a company’s overall corporate strategy as it directly relates to the bottom line. Given the required collaboration between multiple departments, it’s important to have a procurement contract review checklist available to make sure the legal document’s terms are in line with corporate standards, helping avoid any delays or rejection of procurement.

Here are the top 8 things you should look for when redlining a procurement contract.

  1. Determine the level of delegated authority. Nail down who is responsible in your organization for routine purchases, who controls the acquisition of all the company’s requirements, etc.
  2. Define cost restraints. Establish the types of commitment and pre-set financial limits that staff are permitted to enter into so it’s clear for the legal team reviewing.
  3. Doublecheck the basics. It’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of the contract, but don’t forget about the nuts and bolts: parties’ names, price and dates/deadlines.
  4. Look for automatic renewals. Get familiar with the steps your company will need to take if you do not want the procurement contract to renew, and any associated penalties. If you do make the call to let the contract auto-renew, verify that the terms are favorable for your organization and are fair to both parties.
  5. Put safety and quality first. Part of your job is to ensure that only reputable suppliers are used. Make sure to include contractual obligations such as compliance with local health and safety laws and require updates regarding safety information for substances and industrial products directly in purchasing documents.
  6. Search for how changes will be processed. Requiring advance written notice for processing changes in purchase orders to the organization is always advisable.
  7. Verify the duration of the contract. Determining your corporate standards for the duration of contract is an important legal detail. Whether it be 12 months or 36 months, make sure the entire legal team is aware and on the lookout for the duration clause during the legal contract review process.
  8. Implementing a procurement contract checklist in your contract review workflow can help avoid costly mistakes. However, the best way to ensure that no stone (or legal clause) is left unturned is to supplement the human lawyer’s efforts with legal automation technology.

There are many types of contracts that are related to the procurement and supply chain world. ReviewAI now supports the following:

  • Purchase and Supply Review: Quickly check for common key issues when reviewing purchase and supply agreements such as payment terms, warranties and termination rights.
  • Statement of Work: Save time reviewing statements of work by being alerted to common issues, such as termination, liability and dispute resolution procedures.
  • Letters of Engagement: Use this review to quickly check for key issues in engagement letters, including scope of service, payment terms and warranties. In addition, the new procurement skillset automatically takes you to the key issues when engaging in procurement-focused contracts and helps you understand your contractual obligations. You can use this skillset to build reviews to evaluate your supply chain, risk exposure and contract management lifecycle.

As you start defining your internal contract review process, be sure to arm yourself with the best legal technology and knowledge to improve efficiency, decrease risk and promote effective procurement. Learn how ReviewAI can help.

Introducing a New Resource for the Europe In-House Legal Community

Posted on June 30, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Onit is excited to announce that it has extended its Lean into LegalOps virtual learning program to the Europe in-house legal community. Members of Lean into LegalOps Europe will have access to exclusive Europe-focused educational materials. They will also receive invitations to virtual legal operations discussions featuring Onit customers and partners and be included in a bi-weekly, peer-to-peer discussion group for European members only.

We sat down with Robert Johnson, managing director of Onit’s London office, to talk to him about the program and the state of legal operations in Europe.

Q:  What are some of the challenges that the Europe in-house legal community face?

A: In-house counsel in Europe encounter legal operations challenges that drastically differ from their U.S. colleagues. First, compliance with data and privacy laws is exceptionally complicated and varies by country. You also have EU-wide laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that corporations must address. If a corporation does not meet these compliance levels, they may face steep fines or government investigations.

Second, in the last five to 10 years, large organisations in Europe have been growing rapidly and often by acquisition. As a result, they may have multiple duplicative systems in legal as well as other departments like accounting or HR. They’re shifting their focus from “how to get by” to best practices and overcoming the challenges of, for example, 10 different systems that come with worries about integrations, silos, and more.

Q: What’s important when it comes to EU legal operations management?

A: Since Europe is not as litigious as the U.S., European companies generally don’t place a high priority on cost savings for legal operations as the U.S. does. Instead, the focus is on leveraging and understanding data and creating efficiencies to reduce the time spent on lower-value work. Legal departments are also bringing in new types of job roles, such as analytic specialists who can code and work with large data sets.

Q: How does Lean into LegalOps support the Europe in-house legal community?

A: Lean into LegalOps taps into the ingenuity shown by legal professionals in Europe. People are always intrigued by what other people are accomplishing. The program allows them to connect, share stories and best practices, and demonstrate how they’ve used Onit technology to address formidable challenges. The educational resources will vary from informal Q&As, customer demos of how they’ve used Onit technology like Apptitude or contract lifecycle management, and examples of working across departments such as HR, marketing, and more to efficiently address business functions and build transparency.

About Lean into LegalOps Europe

Onit began the virtual learning and networking program in response to the global pandemic.

This online learning initiative highlights programming from the Onit and SimpleLegal customer base, industry thought leaders, and innovators in the space. The masterclasses cover topics such as how to use workflow tools to manage a distributed workforce, how to implement technology strategies that deliver immediate cost savings and ROI, and how to quantify and defend the value in the legal department. There is no cost to join. If interested, please sign up here.