Author: Onit

5 Signs It’s Time to Upgrade Your CLM

Posted on January 18, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

State-of-the-art contract lifecycle management (CLM) technology has come a long way in making a difference for enterprise businesses. But is your current CLM solution up to snuff? Here’s what to look for so you can uplevel the streamlining of your contract review, drive revenue generation, and future-proof your portfolio and business.

In any typical workday, week, quarter, and fiscal year, the average Fortune 1000 company may handle several tens of thousands of contracts.

That means that — spanning your enterprise, and pulling in colleagues from Sales, Procurement, and Finance — each contract will need to be negotiated, reviewed, and executed. Then, when that part of the process is complete, with signatures on the proverbial dotted lines, the lifecycle management of that contract begins, including monitoring for regulatory compliance and “re”-review at renewal time.

Now, repeat that process… perhaps 25,000 (or more) times!

This very real scenario — which commands at least half, and as much as 70%, of legal professionals’ time — is what makes end-to-end CLM solutions essential. Whereas manual contract management can cause roadblocks and revenue leakage, the most cutting-edge CLM tools transform the contracting process’s speed and spending, from capture and creation through post-execution management, all while harnessing critical insights and diminishing risk.

Could your CLM use an overhaul? Here are five signs:

1. “It’s a challenge to find our contracts.”

To elevate efficiency and drive revenue, you need to know where every contract is. However, manual tools like spreadsheets, network shares, and legacy technology solutions tend to be unwieldy and jam up workflows.

The newest CLM tools with built-in version control and readily searchable repositories serve as a single source of truth, eliminating precious hours of searching for crucial information and helping business operations regain control of all contracts — leading to a 50%+ improvement in productivity and 24% reduction in the average sales cycle length.

2. “There isn’t enough visibility into our portfolio.”

Contracts are the nucleus of every business cell, defining any value exchanged. Without insight into obligations and terms, there can be revenue leakage of more than 9% annually.

For this reason, legal ops, procurement teams, and portfolio managers require visibility to discover and assess risk before it disrupts business. How to do this when elements of risk may be hidden deep within contracts? Introduce CLM with a risk analysis dashboard to provide visibility and initiate proactive contract management. By assessing contracts for varying degrees of risk based on developed playbooks and calculating a risk score, your team will have thorough and profound oversight of your contract portfolio.

3. “We’re not getting the value we wanted.”

Your CLM solution may have initially provided some shiny bells and whistles, but if it’s begun to feel subpar, the most state-of-the-art way to achieve greater value is by integrating CLM with automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to escalate the contract review and management process.

When powered by AI, today’s CLM solutions can redline a contract in two minutes or less and have been proven to reduce end-to-end NDA processing time by a remarkable 70%. A clause usage dashboard can offer an insight-centric approach to contract generation, and the best contract management platforms also have intuitive, user-friendly interfaces that help your company get up and running in less than 30 days.

Of course, the value of vanguard technologies isn’t always realized instantaneously — but integrated systems do deliver on their promise for both scaling and sustaining material growth with the potential of slashing overall business costs by up to 90%.

4. “We’ve missed renewal deadlines.”

Staying up-to-speed on contract renewals can feel like a formidable task — but not remaining on top of deadlines can be deleterious, seriously impacting customer retention rates.

Intelligent CLM is equipped with real-time obligation tracking to manage and measure not only all emerging legal requirements and compliance-related tasks, but also intermittent event-driven obligations, such as renewal dates, expirations, cycle times, and even pricing changes. This way, your team will never overlook or miss an important date again.

5. “We could use better cross-functional collaboration.”

Legal operations doesn’t operate in a silo. To achieve goals with the most successful outcomes, connection and collaboration with Sales, Procurement, and other functions are vital — making the ability for all departments to view, track, redline, and approve documents an absolute necessity as well.

With the latest CLM, all departments can manage contracts in conjunction, with edits synchronized across platforms to secure version control and eradicate duplicate entry. When combined with system integrations, CLM also allows departments to synchronize data and create compliance contracts, NDAs, and MSAs, catapulting accuracy and efficiency and eliminating siloed contract management.

Taking control with innovation

There has been a definitive evolution in the execution and efficiency of contract management. If you nodded in agreement with any of the above statements, the message is clear: It’s time to upgrade your CLM.

In doing so, you can eliminate inefficiencies, enhance insights, and provide deeper visibility into your contract portfolio. Not only that, but the time saved can be funneled into Legal serving as a trusted advisor, corporate role model, and creating an impact where it matters most: building relationships, developing strategy, and skyrocketing the material growth of your business.

Learn how Onit’s next-generation CLM solutions and AI-powered innovations meet you where you work with end-to-end automation of the contract management process to cultivate partnerships, elevate efficiency, and ignite revenue growth for enterprise-wide success.

Mythbusting CLM: 4 Common Misconceptions

Posted on January 11, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions with end-to-end automation diminish risk and catapult both operational and cost efficiency — but they may also come with uncertainty about how (and why) they make a difference. Here, we dispel the misinformation so you can get back your time and empower your organization for success.

Nessie amid a swirl of bubbles in Loch Ness’ cold, murky waters. Sasquatch’s enormous footprints stomping across the forest floor. Pandora, unable to resist temptation, twisting open the jar from which all the world’s evils escape.

These are some of the most famous myths — but there are also several surrounding CLM. Although AI-powered CLM solutions have been proven to deliver advanced contract review, document management, and risk mitigation, the 2022 Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report revealed half (54%) of legal professionals still do not use automated contract processes, leaving a major opportunity untapped for legal operations to impact and transform their businesses.

It’s time to tackle those misconceptions and debunk these outdated CLM myths.

Myth #1: CLM is cost-prohibitive, time-consuming, and difficult.

“Do more with less.” In this global macroeconomic market where cost containment and efficiency are key, that has become a near-constant mantra — and this is where CLM shines.

According to the ELR Report, 40% of legal professionals spend four to five hours each day manually reviewing and managing contracts. That means half of every week, quarter, and fiscal year is tied up in contracts — making half their time unavailable for anything else and essentially costing half their salary. And though some worry it will take too long to train their departments on CLM, the latest solutions are out-of-the-box, intuitive, and ready to implement. Further, the return on investment (ROI) is real for CLM, as it has been proven to shorten the length of the typical sales cycle by 24%.

The reality is there can be no revenue recognition until contracts are signed. CLM tools accelerate the entire contract process, from document generation and redlining to e-signature and finalization. This acceleration can then pilot faster decision-making on how to push contracts through review cycles, renewals, and negotiation — leading to faster material growth and both time and spend saved.

Myth #2: CLM will take over the work attorneys do.

While this is a classic fear and “rise of the robots” sci-fi flicks might try and convince you otherwise, it’s unfounded to believe that Legal will be replaced by CLM applications or any related AI offerings.

It’s true, of course, that AI has been developed to automate many duties, and the most innovative AI-enabled CLM can review and redline a contract in under two minutes, catching errors that our overworked human gazes might mistakenly overlook. Yet there is much tech cannot accomplish: establish strategic relationships with vendors and clients; negotiate deals, give advice, and propose forward-thinking innovation; initiate significant, meaningful, and lasting change. All of these require distinctively human skills and expertise.

That said, what is true is that technology is an enabler for businesses and practitioners who do wish to evolve and grow — and though automation will not replace attorneys, attorneys who do not adopt new tech will likely be replaced by those who do.

Myth #3: Migration of legacy contracts can happen automatically.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in life nor business that is a one-press “easy” button. Some contract management tools may be bolted to systems initially built for other business uses, limiting functionality and creating challenges for data migration.

So if you’ve been told that data migration is simple — that simply may not be true. However, it doesn’t have to feel impossible. Though filing cabinets, shared drives, and Excel spreadsheets may provide an illusion of order, what they don’t provide is overall visibility of your contract portfolio. CLM augmented by AI can help organize inventory, digitize contracts, and define data points. By analyzing and extracting legacy contract metadata — including critical dates, terms, and clauses — you can create and maintain an indexed, searchable, and reportable contract repository, preventing 9.2% in revenue leakage annually.

Myth #4: My department doesn’t need CLM.

Every department hires employees, negotiates with clients, procures vendors, and settles upon agreements. And so, every department can benefit from CLM.

While Legal’s top concern may be the age-old dance of speed vs. detail immersion for risk avoidance, Sales frequently fears contract holdups will hold up further revenue potential. Procurement, meanwhile, must juggle stakeholder needs, supplier value, and budgeting and spend. Yet CLM has been found to streamline the contract lifecycle for all parties. In fact, legal departments of billion-dollar companies that employ contract management technology often reduce their average contract cycle time by over 33%, from 30 days to just 20.

If you’re thinking, “Well, my company is nowhere near that size,” scalable CLM solutions may be even more what the legal tech revolution ordered: AI-enabled platforms assist legal departments to increase their productivity by more than 50% – which is analogous to having twice as many lawyers on staff!

The (top and) bottom line

With these CLM myths busted, you have the unique opportunity to lead the evolution of contract management for your business — saving on speed and spend and influencing topline revenue generation, bottom-line cost efficiency, and operational excellence for unprecedented success.

Learn how Onit’s next-generation CLM solutions and AI-powered innovations meet you where you work with end-to-end automation of the contract management process to cultivate partnerships, elevate efficiency, and ignite revenue growth for enterprise-wide success. 

Using Data-Driven Solutions to Empower DEI in Legal: A Conversation

Posted on January 10, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Recently, Morae’s Managing Director Bret Baccus and Onit’s Senior VP of Strategy and Growth Brad Rogers sat down for a wide-ranging discussion (view the full webinar here). As part of the conversation, they spoke about DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts in the legal industry and how data-driven tools can help these efforts. Hear their thoughts on this issue in this edited excerpt.

DEI and Legal

BRAD: On the idea of DEI and the importance of its strategic alignment to the legal department and the company as a whole: How have you seen this strategy play out? How have you seen DEI, as a priority, be driven by legal departments?

BRET: I think DEI has always been an important initiative for a legal department, and that legal — as a whole — has been a key driver within corporations around DEI. I think something shifted in the vernacular in the dialogue around DEI after the George Floyd situation. That focus and resurgence in DEI efforts remains significant in all departments, with an even bigger shift in law firms around it.Best practices and opportunities

BRAD: What are the best practices and opportunities for others to leverage data to have an impact on DEI efforts?

BRET: Several things come to mind regarding data collection to drive DEI efforts, even beyond vendor management. First, are you collecting important data from your law firms? There are different applications to do it; having it and using it with your ELM is critical, but there are different third-party applications on the market to consider. Those can aggregate that data so it can get reported to you based on matters and your law firms without exposing some of the more confidential information to individuals working on cases.

The other thing more departments are putting into place now is Mansfield Tracking. This covers your internal processes — what are you doing with candidate tracking overall? What are you doing internally with candidate tracking, and are you looking at appropriately diverse candidates and profiles as you go through the interview process? Some clients of Onit’s use the IT application to help set up and manage the Mansfield process for organizations; that’s just an area where Onit’s application works very well with DEI.

Making an immediate impact

BRAD: An observation: there are certainly law firms out there challenged with the diversity issue and are certainly aware of it. I believe their heart is in the right place, and they’re taking concrete things to have an impact — but that impact is slow. The numbers don’t change much, year-over-year. That’s just kind of the reality of the situation; you’re looking at the numbers, and that’s not very fast-moving.

However, if you look at the teams you source at the matter level, that your law firm partner is sourcing for you and your lawyers, you can use that data to look at the team and make some immediate steps towards choosing diverse options. That’s an immediate impact.

BRET: I couldn’t agree with you more. I mentioned that a variety of applications out there have a great tracking option to deliver that insight. One of my favorites, for example, is the SimpleLegal product from the Onit family; it has a fantastic DEI interface that makes it so easy to do what you were talking about with managing and examining various law firms.

This sort of data-driven look allows you to get a fundamental understanding of what’s happening with diversity efforts on a matter-by-matter basis at different law firms. I head up our organization’s DEI council, and when you start looking, you begin to understand and know what firms are committed to these efforts. Reed Smith, for example, is one law firm at the forefront of DEI efforts, trying to shift what they’re doing and how they’re impacting communities.

A lot of organizations and firms are looking at the DEI topic, but — as you said — the meter is moving slowly. It’s very much a long-term effort, but the good news is that we’re seeing more and more organizations start to make a real commitment to this work.

Click here to view the entire conversation between Bret and Brad.

4 Benefits of Modern Legal Spend Management Software

Posted on December 15, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s economic climate, companies are increasingly focused on optimizing both internal and external resources; Legal is no exception. From simple spend visibility to cost control and efficiency, modern legal spend management solutions are helping forward-thinking General Counsels make more strategic, data-driven decisions about how they invest their outside counsel spend.

But what benefits can you expect from your legal spend management system? Let’s break them down here:

1. Better Strategic Decisions Driven By Data

When it comes to managing your outside counsel spend, everything (and we mean everything) starts with your data.

Legal billing — from getting rate visibility to discount clarity — is complicated. For example, your rate card and the effective rates you actually pay may be very different. Understanding that (and many other aspects of your bills) is critical to effective budgeting, forecasting, and strong outside counsel vendor management.

Knowing your numbers like the back of your hand won’t only help with budgeting or operational efficiency. Data will also help you make better, faster decisions. For example, which firm in a panel is most efficient for certain matter types? Are you overpaying because of inappropriate staffing decisions (e.g., partners executing associate level tasks or consistent meeting overstaffing)?

Fast access to trustworthy data that can be sliced and diced to support your business’ specific needs and your specific questions will not only save you and your team time and money, but it will also give you the fuel you need to make truly informed decisions fast.

2. Clear “Should Cost” Understanding

What should that big matter you have coming up actually cost? It’s a question GCs and finance departments ask themselves all the time, with little success. RFPs are often wildly off when it comes to predicting costs. It’s common for a matter to cost 150-200% of the firm’s original bid. So, what’s the best way to anticipate what a big upcoming matter will cost?

True, market-driven benchmarking is the only way to not only anticipate more accurate costs for upcoming matters, but also to obtain the most competitive rates or AFAs.

However, benchmarking can be tricky. Make sure your benchmarking solution considers practice area, matter type, and tier of firm. For example, you can’t compare complex real estate litigation with standard insurance claims litigation. You also can’t compare insurance claims litigation costs for one cause of loss with another, or from one jurisdiction to another. So, make sure your benchmarks allow you to get granular; anything less can leave you holding the bag on a very big and unexpected bill!

3. Better Governance

Managing your outside counsel firms can be challenging. Just enforcing guidelines accountability is not only time consuming but can also be like finding a needle in an intentionally large haystack. Even getting visibility on their staffing practices can be tough.

Modern legal spend management software can remove the headaches of guidelines compliance and provide much-needed visibility on staffing and billing practices for both you and your firms. Some solutions provide easy-to-use firm report cards that show trends over time on everything — average hours per matter, timekeeper breakdowns, rates, and more. When shared with your firms, report cards provide a fantastic basis for effective management; many forward-thinking GCs use them to drive quarterly or biannual reviews.

4. Clean, Structured, Usable Data

Data can provide a window into performance, highlighting meaningful opportunities for improvement. Most successful businesses have leveraged data for years to inform strategic decisions as well as operational efficiency – but not so much in legal departments.

Legal billing data is a necessity to understand all aspects of success. However, historically, legal billing data has been a mess (to put it mildly). With no standard taxonomy (way of organizing data), copious human error, and unique domain challenges led to a web of tangled data that in most cases just didn’t line up. With no apples-to-apples comparison possible, data often led to misleading takeaways and potentially poor decisions.

But, never fear. Advanced legal billing software can help you make sense of your data. By leveraging new technologies like machine learning and AI, cutting edge legal billing solutions can not only structure the data you have but also correct errors and enhance the data to allow for deeper insights.

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

6 Ways Your Contract Portfolio May Be Losing Value

Posted on December 14, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Is your organization making the most of your contract portfolio? Learn how to take control and up-level your portfolio’s value with solutions that can reduce revenue leakage, provide more meaningful oversight, and unlock tremendous material impact — all while helping your department connect more deeply across the enterprise.

If a company is a house of business, then contracts are its foundation — so much so that many industries often have 90% or more of their annual revenue locked into contracts, according to McKinsey & Company.

On the flip side, a lack of efficient contract management can lead to diminished visibility, inconsistent workflows, damaged vendor and supplier relationships, and an erosion of value to your contract portfolio at an average of 9% — and as much as 15% — revenue loss each year.

Here are six ways your contract portfolio may be losing value and how you turn that around today:

1. Lack of pricing tier awareness.

Contracts determine the financial flow of an organization, with each one carrying its own set of terms and risks. There is term-based pricing, release orders that may delay the purchase, and evergreen contracts that could contain and express entirely different obligations — as well as any agreement your company, well, agrees to. However, when the buy side often proffers a “take as long as you wish” philosophy while the sell side supports cash-in-hand as fast as possible, making certain to keep clear note of more flexible (even unfavorable) tiers can empower your department to avoid revenue leakage.

2. Missing deadlines and renewals.

For many contracts, there is a certain sequence that can lead to penalties if not followed. These can be financial in nature such as fees, fines, and compensatory damages, but they may also include long-term ramifications, like damaged reputation or even vendor or client loss. Establishing customer expectations and clarifying consistent protocols like project timelines, production schedules, and delivery dates can help your department stay on top of important milestones and eliminate lost time and missed revenue opportunities.

3. Not holding vendors to terms.

Procurement contracts cement the partnership between buyers and suppliers. What vendors does our company use? What rates were negotiated? It’s all black-and-white in the contract. But if a company is lax about delivering what was agreed upon, all negotiations can be invalid. Don’t let a lack of visibility into spend performance get away from your business, as diligent enforcement of negotiated supplier terms is a primary source of revenue.

4. Playing “ostrich” with the risks.

Contracts are, by nature, conduits of risk mitigation — so even the simplest one can lay an organization bare to liability if not handled properly. Especially in a tumultuous macroeconomic market laden with pandemic supply chain issues and geopolitical conflict, it is crucial to maintain current regulatory knowledge, know how to adapt quickly to new financial guidelines, and be aware of which contracts in your portfolio have clauses built in to address risk. The ability to not bury your head in the sand and quickly pivot to examine contracts for risk compliance will speed time to future revenue.

5. A sense of disorganization.

One reason a contract portfolio may lose value is the simple chaos of our busy business lives. A study published in the Journal of Contract Management revealed that seven in 10 companies find it challenging to find vital documents, despite contracts being a critical business tool and source of value. The need to search for contracts is a thief of time better spent on higher-value tasks, such as analyzing data insights or becoming an advocate for meaningful diversity and inclusivity. Launching, migrating, and archiving a secure, central, and digital document repository with a keyword search tool will promote better transparency across functions and contribute to faster revenue recognition.

6. Reluctance to add automation and AI to the mix.

Manual contract management programs that involve spreadsheet-based processes are not only time prohibitive and labor-intensive — often usurping at least half of most legal professionals’ workdays — but also devoid of the insight that advances true efficiency. However, contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI) take visibility and efficiency to the next level by automating manual workflows and alerting teams to necessary updates and improvements. As a result, the most innovative can redline contracts in under two minutes, applying your company’s playbook and accelerating contract review by up to 70%.

A crossroad of opportunity and growth

The creation and execution of contracts comprise accountability, obligation, and trust. Visibility is also essential for discovering and assessing the risk that could disrupt business. Examining your contract portfolio regularly will help your department retain control, reduce rogue spending, and embrace collaboration across the enterprise. With this new era of CLM, innovation is at your fingertips to execute contracts more effectively and efficiently. This way, your team can focus on what matters most: unlocking the value of your existing contract portfolio, optimizing strategic and meaningful new partnerships, and skyrocketing your department’s revenue generation and operational excellence.

Learn how Onit’s next-generation CLM solutions and AI-powered innovations meet you where you work with end-to-end automation of the contract management process to cultivate partnerships, elevate efficiency, and ignite revenue growth for enterprise-wide success.

How Legal Ops Can Bring Value to an Organization 

Posted on December 14, 2022 by - Business Process Management

Recently, Morae’s Managing Director Bret Baccus and Onit’s Senior VP of Strategy and Growth Brad Rogers sat down for a wide-ranging discussion (view the full conversation here). As part of the conversation, they discussed the best ways legal ops can start to bring value to the overall organization. Hear their thoughts on this issue in this edited excerpt.

Getting started

BRAD: Bret, we’re talking to many legal departments with various sizes, levels of experience, and types of clients. Many folks want to get started on the legal ops journey to help bring value to the organization. What is a good place to begin?

BRET: At Morae, we work with a wide range of clients — from experienced Fortune 50 companies to small departments at the beginning of the maturity model. When we think about where to start, one essential element is to ensure you have a legal operations lead who can help guide the organization through this journey. When we think about the maturity model, there are a ton of other things to consider — but making sure you have that strong legal ops support and lead is critical for getting started.

BRAD: What are some practical pointers for legal ops leaders new to the role? Perhaps they were a lawyer, paralegal, or change agent somewhere else in the company. How can they deliver this change or provide the future of law to the department?

BRET: Being that change agent is critical. Bringing in change management principles, no matter your role, is a great idea. For example, try working groups for different areas you need to address and tackle problems that way versus the traditional hierarchical approach to problem-solving. Effective change management automatically positions you as a change leader. If you are leading an initiative and putting together teams to successfully deliver on these initiatives, that will be a driver of positive change throughout the organization.

Delivering savings

BRAD: Determining where to start depends on what lever you are trying to move. One of those levers could be delivering savings. There are a couple of places with existing waste where you would not get a ton of resistance to implementing change. For example: what does our outside counsel spend look like now? If you can quantify in your prior spend that there are rules that are not being followed thanks to a lack of awareness or education, that’s easy money. Could that fund a successful transformation journey? It could add substantial savings on outside counsel and outside counsel spend management.

BRET: Outside counsel spend management is an entire, beneficial journey you can go on. You can even check if your outside counsel guidelines are up to date with industry best practices; for example, maybe you don’t pay for legal research invoices, but do you also not pay for legal research time? Have you updated not to include electronic transmissions? Those could lead to some savings.

However, the real savings around outside counsel time comes from examining the strategic alignment of work that comes in, along with the risk and complexity of the work that is coming in and putting in a program that aligns that spend to the type of firm needed. That’s one transformational aspect; instead of going to your default Am Law 50 or Am Law 100 firms, is there an opportunity to look at regional or boutique firms that provide the same quality of service when the risk is not the same?

In transforming the department as a new legal ops person, you can implement processes not as far along on the maturity model. Perhaps you have only annualized budgets in place for the legal department, and you can peel that onion back in legal ops and put it in place in conjunction with your ELM system budgeting based on matter spend thresholds, breaking that down by timekeeper level and other things, and putting in place review levels of the matters. With that alone, we’ve seen savings between 2% to 5% just by implementing standardized budgeting at a more granular level within the department.

Utilizing data to gain insights

BRAD: If you’re a legal ops leader with a new mandate or an opportunity to drive savings in their legal organization in the legal department, one way to start is “inventing data,” I’ll call it. If you can’t go into a system and get data one way, try surveying your lawyers and asking how they allocate their time towards different areas of legal specialties. You can take those fractional amounts of time they spend on specific tasks, get a data set, and look for insights.

Are there areas of practice we could do something different with more modern methods that could free up lawyers to do additional work, lower our costs, or deliver even more sophisticated law through engaging an outside partner?

BRET: I couldn’t agree more. It’s a great place to start. Over the last couple of years, the trend has been more insourcing of specialized work; because more departments have more of that spend data, they’re able to look and get insights. Data privacy is a good example. How much are we spending on data privacy in a given year? How many different firms or locations do we have that spread across? That’s just one example. Over the last three or so years, more insourcing of specialty work has been occurring by utilizing departments’ spend data.

BRAD: Have you seen opportunities where someone could get started on understanding the flow in the front door and how they might take that data and do something with it that is impactful?

BRET: Absolutely. So, we are considering what I call legal service request intake and how we manage and think about that. The answer is yes. This is an area where more departments are beginning to look at how they intake work into the department — what does the volume look like, and how do they intake it? You can start that process. As a new legal ops person, you can begin by determining whether you’re tracking your internal matters.

Before you go to a legal service request, are you utilizing your matter management system to track matters used for external work and all the legal department work? Are you examining the service or value provided to the department not just in terms of contracts and commercials but the corporate support and potentially IP support, everything the department’s doing for the business? That’s where I would start first: are you currently tracking the system or the data? Then I’m excited to talk about how we can bring value to the department and the business regarding where that intake begins.

Click here to view the entire conversation between Bret and Brad.

Leveraging AI-Enabled Dashboards and System Integrations to Simplify Contract Management

Posted on December 7, 2022 by - Business Process Management

Contracts are crucial to the success of any organization — but guiding them from initiation and creation through execution can feel like an endless uphill battle. Fortunately, there are state-of-the-art solutions that can reduce time spent on contracts, automate processes, and decrease manual work so your department can focus more on what matters most.

Throughout the course of history, contracts have defined history. From the Declaration of Independence to the Paris Agreement, contracts have developed nations, delivered freedom, and established peace. Contracts are no exception when it comes to business, whether it’s merging corporate giants like Disney and Marvel or creating legally binding documents for your enterprise.

In fact, nearly half (43%) of legal departments globally handle up to 1,000 contracts every year — a towering number that catapults even higher in the United Kingdom, where one in four (25%) legal professionals processes more than 2,000 contracts annually, according to the 2022 Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report. And with two in five (40%) respondents spending four to five hours each day poring over them, nearly half of every work week, quarter, and fiscal year is spent on contract review.

Moreover, slowly executed contracts adversely impact business, negatively affecting everything from deal closure and revenue generation (44%) to mergers and acquisitions (23%). Further, during what tends to be a labor-intensive and non-cost-effective process for Legal, other functions — such as Sales and Procurement — may be left wondering what stage their contracts are in, what the next steps are, and when they can expect to move forward.

However, contracting doesn’t have to feel overwhelming and seemingly infinite. Implementing an end-to-end contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution that meets you where you work can empower your business teams by automating the contract lifecycle, elevating collaboration, efficiency, and productivity across your entire enterprise — and enhancing partnerships with internal clients, customers, and vendors, too.

MAKE YOUR WORK WORK FOR YOU

Most organizations have repositories of contracts, but many do not have a structured process for storing and extracting relevant data for analysis. This can make drafting and executing contracts and the commercial policies and regulatory changes that contracts oversee arduous. Enter artificial intelligence (AI), which can enhance your data and allow for actionable decision-making.

An AI-enabled dashboard can unlock the data in contracts to influence faster business results by providing deeper visibility and the insight to assess varying levels of risk within a contract portfolio. With the dashboard’s ability to automatically calculate a risk score and present that information based on developed playbooks, Legal can clarify its contracts and review them more expeditiously. Further, sales and procurement professionals can leverage AI to report on cycle times and portfolio value trends, determine additional sourcing and profit optimization areas, and negotiate price breaks.

Introducing a clause library allows for even higher-level oversight and greater data-driven efficiencies. A library of specifically tailored, up-to-date contract generation templates with a central clause bank that captures new clauses regarding terms, details, and technical “legalese” eliminates the need to review contracts line by line. This ensures consistency, identifies issues often missed (even by professionals) to mitigate risk, and automates the process so Legal doesn’t have to spend time customizing contracts for typical agreements – and has been proven to increase productivity by as much as 50%.

MAKE YOUR WORK FLOW

Another way to simplify the contract management process is by pairing a robust contract management solution with a cutting-edge cloud-based system. All too often, when contracts are negotiated, significant details — such as fees and obligations — can get lost post-signature. For example, Procurement generally pays invoices when they come in; thus, they may not have kept negotiated terms top of mind. So how can they comply with supplier pricing and give more visibility into post-execution workflows?

Integrating systems can combine the benefits of both platforms, creating a streamlined contract workflow process that flows final contracts and data for ongoing management while improving transparency, amplifying efficiency, and enforcing compliance by reporting on commercial terms in a structured form. In turn, this can contribute to speeding sales cycles and time to revenue up to 24%.

MAKE YOUR WORK CONNECT

There is no denying that the contract process has become exponentially complex. Still, managing it doesn’t have to be.

What’s more, contracting has the capability to connect Legal more closely to the enterprise. Every department creates and manages contracts. Every department hires people, negotiates with clients, and makes agreements that ultimately lead to contracts. By taking control of the contract management process, your business will phase out data silos, remedy contractual issues, and embolden relationships between internal functions, while accelerating cost and operational efficiency as well as material impact. By tracking dashboard insights and utilizing AI-powered playbooks to identify key terms and clauses, Legal has the opportunity to become more strategic, visible, and efficient, giving Sales and Procurement greater transparency and agility – all while saving up to 9% in overall legal spend each year.

The practice of law is unequivocally an art. Technology has become an essential tool for contracts and a catalyst for growth, competition, and differentiation. CLM solutions augmented by AI-enabled dashboards and coupled with system integrations are a merging of art and science that represents a revolutionary new age of collaboration, innovation, and evolution today — as well as the promise of impactive business success for future tomorrows.

 Tired of Slow, Manual Contract Reviews?

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What is Legal Document Management?

Posted on December 6, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

As the name suggests, legal document management involves storing and handling documents related to legal matters. Lawyers deal in vast numbers of documents and files every day, from contracts, licenses, and letters to emails, notices, and reports. For this reason, they need access to systems that not only help store documents but also track, manage and search them. In fact, document management should not be confused with document storage, which is merely the saving and ordering of documents within folders either stored locally or in a file server.

Document management is so much more. While there are numerous digital document management tools, document management practices for legal often differ significantly compared to standards in other industries. As a result, dedicated legal document management software emerged in the 1990s to support law firms and in-house legal teams. Since then, the legal document management market has matured dramatically, and the solutions have moved into the cloud and become collaborative.

ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF A LEGAL DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DMS)

There are now many legal document management tools that can help legal teams to manage all their documents and correspondence; it can sometimes take time to know where to start and what functionality to look for. Before we get to some more interesting features, let’s start with the basic functionality essential for an excellent legal document management system.

STORE, ORGANIZE, AND SEARCH

A legal DMS should enable legal teams to store, organize and search their legal documents. This involves being able to move and copy documents where needed. Users should be able to record metadata about each document (e.g., matter number, team, location, etc.), and that metadata should be searchable along with the file name and document contents.

VERSION CONTROL

A legal DMS should also have version control functionality – allowing different versions of the same document to be saved (and in some cases restored), with the ability to check out documents to prevent version conflict. Auditing is also critical; there should be a record of every interaction between a user and a document version to clarify who did what and when.

NATIVE COMPATIBILITY

Documents should be able to be opened in their native applications directly from the legal DMS. It’s also vital that documents (both a copy and a link to the underlying document) can be shared via the legal DMS. With so many documents exchanged over email, integration with MS Outlook and other email clients is essential so that documents can be sent via email and emails and their attachments can be saved to the system. For this reason, it’s also crucial that legal document management systems support the storage of both emails and their metadata.

NUMBERING

Finally, a numbering convention is necessary with many documents and versions handled. Look for systems that automatically number documents, including matter and version numbers.

IMPORTANT LEGAL DMS FUNCTIONALITY

As well as the core features, there is another key functionality you should look for in a legal document management system.

SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE

A legal professional must adhere to industry compliance and security standards. When choosing a legal DMS, ensure it has top-grade and industry-recognized security certifications (ISO, HIPAA, and SOC) and excellent infrastructure security, including firewalls, application-level filtering, antivirus scanning, and intrusion detection. Also, ensure that data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. Application security is also vital – for example, password expiry and IP restrictions for cloud-based solutions. Any legal DMS vendor should be backing up data to multiple secure locations to ensure data integrity, and robust disaster recovery procedures should be in place.

Look for products that are thoroughly and regularly audited by third-party security experts who provide penetration testing and more. If you opt for a cloud solution, ensure you know where your data will be stored and that the data centers have state-of-the-art physical security.

RECORDS MANAGEMENT

Records management involves managing the creation, use, management, and disposal of records, including certain documents. It’s a critical component of most organizations’ risk and compliance activities. Therefore, any legal document management system should be able to allocate unique identifiers to documents, prevent unauthorized changes to documents, lock documents to avoid modification, and create audit trails of the document lifecycle. The system should also support retention scheduling and rules for how long different documents should be kept. These rules should be assigned based on the type of document. Finally, the legal DMS should allow for the disposition of documents that no longer need to be retained.

PERMISSIONS MANAGEMENT

Look for systems that provide role-based permissioning to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information. With this functionality, documents and folders can be restricted for access by certain users or groups only. However, sometimes more than this level of permissioning is needed when specific matters and associated data need to be completely hidden from all but a small group of people. Just because you can’t see a particular document doesn’t mean metadata (e.g., matter name) will also be hidden in other system areas, such as lookups, which could be a problem for highly sensitive matters. Look for legal DMS that lock down the whole matter by hiding the matter and its data and documents from appearing anywhere in the system for non-authorized users.

INTEGRATIONS

Documents, and contracts, in particular, are part of a broader lifecycle encompassing drafting, review, negotiation, execution, and management. While legal document management systems help with storage and versioning, many legal teams rely on other tools to support the different elements of the document lifecycle. For this reason, when looking at legal DMS, you should make sure it has the integrations you need right now and the future integrations you may need. At a minimum, ensure the system integrates well with Microsoft Office and Outlook.

Given we are now a remote workforce following the pandemic, look for tools that integrate with collaboration and instant messaging tools like MS Teams and Slack. You can also look at integrations with document assembly tools for drafting documents and eSignature tools for document execution. You may also favor legal DMS platforms that integrate with artificial intelligence (AI) tools so that you can intelligently sort, categorize and review your documents and extract meaningful data. AI integrations can significantly improve the search quality within your legal DMS.

Legal documents go hand-in-hand with legal matters and projects. There needs to be a very close alignment between a legal DMS and a matter management system. This enables matter data to be associated with documents and invoices in the legal DMS, and the matter management system pulls in relevant documents for a particular matter. For legal teams to operate efficiently, they need to consolidate and align their data across multiple systems. This also offers the best user experience, so users are not always “context switching” into different software tools. All your systems need to communicate so counsel can navigate easily across matters and their documents. Legal teams should be looking to start building their “legal operations space” – consisting of a legal document management system alongside matter management, eBilling, and contract management software.

DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS

When purchasing a legal DMS, you will likely have two primary deployment options: on-premise, which means the application and documents will be hosted and stored in your organization’s own IT infrastructure, and cloud, where they are hosted and stored on secure remote servers within one or more data centers. There is a third option – hybrid storage, where the application is cloud-hosted, but documents and data are stored on-premise.

Cloud has its benefits in terms of speed of deployment, scalability, and reduced cost of operation and maintenance; however, on-premise and hybrid solutions are suitable for organizations that want more control over their data and have higher security requirements. Organizations such as financial institutions need very high levels of security. While some cloud providers can meet these standards, some organizations will always insist on on-premise deployments. Make sure you know what your organization expects by deployment and document hosting and that the legal DMS will support this.

COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY

A good legal document management system will help you and your team get work done. Document collaboration is increasingly moving online with document co-authoring tools, including those with MS Office online. This offers a better drafting experience where colleagues can work in real-time to amend and refine documents. Legal DMS systems should offer collaboration tools and integrations to help users not only store and locate documents but also work on them. Look for legal DMS platforms that offer a range of collaboration functionality – from co-authoring and annotations to commenting and approvals. With a growing remote workforce, see if the legal DMS has tools supporting asynchronous working across remotely dispersed teams. Also, consider exploring AI tools to deliver intelligent search capability so users have better access to legal knowledge in context.

TRANSFORM CHAOS INTO ORDER WITH A LEGAL DMS

A legal DMS can transform the way your legal team works, collaborates, and accesses knowledge. It will bring order to the chaos of legal documents and will create a secure and searchable repository that gives your team quick and straightforward access to the documents they need when they need them. The right integrations and functionality will help manage entire document lifecycles and make your legal team more productive with collaboration tools.

Stop hunting down documents across email, local folders, and shared drives, and make the leap to a modern legal DMS. Hopefully, our tips for what to consider will set you and your team on course for an efficient and productive future where working with documents is a pleasure — and not a chore.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.Space today.

WAS IST LEGAL DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT? 

Posted on December 6, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Wie der Begriff schon sagt, umfasst das Legal Document Management das Speichern und Verwalten von Dokumenten, die sich auf rechtliche Angelegenheiten beziehen. Anwälte arbeiten täglich mit einer hohen Anzahl an Dokumenten und Dateien; von Verträgen, Lizenzen und Briefen bis hin zu E-Mails, Bescheiden und Berichten. Aus diesem Grund benötigen sie Zugang zu Systemen, die nicht nur das Speichern von Dokumenten ermöglichen, sondern auch das Verfolgen, Verwalten und Suchen erleichtern. Tatsächlich sollte das Dokumentenmanagement nicht mit der Dokumentenablage verwechselt werden, bei der es sich lediglich um das Speichern und Sortieren von Dokumenten in Ordnern handelt, die entweder lokal oder auf einem Dateiserver gespeichert sind. Das Dokumentenmanagement geht weit darüber hinaus. 

Es gibt zwar zahlreiche Tools für das digitale Dokumentenmanagement, jedoch unterscheiden sich die Praktiken des Dokumentenmanagements im juristischen Bereich oft stark von den Standards in anderen Branchen. Daher entstand in den 1990er Jahren eine spezielle Software, die Kanzleien und interne Rechtsteams bei der Verwaltung juristischer Dokumente unterstützt. Seitdem ist der Markt für juristisches Dokumentenmanagement stark gereift – Cloud-Lösungen wurden entwickelt und fokussieren sich auf die Kollaboration von Legal Teams.  

WESENTLICHE MERKMALE EINES DOKUMENTENMANAGEMENTSYSTEMS (DMS) 

Wie bereits erwähnt existieren mittlerweile zahlreiche Legal Document Management Softwareanbieter, die Rechtsteams beim Verwalten aller Dokumente und der Korrespondenz unterstützen. Die Anzahl ist so überwältigend, dass die Herausforderung eher darin liegt, das geeignete System auszuwählen und die benötigten Funktionen richtig zu definieren. Bevor wir zu den relevantesten Funktionen kommen, möchten wir uns einigen grundlegenden Funktionen widmen, die für ein gutes Legal Dokumentenmanagement-System unerlässlich sind: 

SPEICHERN, ORGANISIEREN UND SUCHEN 

Ein juristisches DMS sollte es Rechtsteams ermöglichen, ihre Dokumente zu speichern, zu organisieren und zu durchsuchen. Dazu gehört die Möglichkeit, Dokumente bei Bedarf zu verschieben und zu kopieren. Benutzer:innen sollten in der Lage sein, Metadaten zu jedem Dokument zu erfassen (z. B. Aktenzeichen, Team, Standort) und diese Metadaten sollten zusammen mit dem Dateinamen und dem Dokumentinhalt durchsuchbar sein. 

VERSIONSKONTROLLE 

Ein Legal DMS sollte auch über Versionskontrollfunktionen verfügen – so können verschiedene Versionen desselben Dokuments gespeichert (und in manchen Fällen wiederhergestellt) werden. So wird die Möglichkeit gegeben, Dokumente zu kontrollieren, um Versionskonflikte zu vermeiden. Auditing ist ebenfalls wichtig – es sollte eine Aufzeichnung jeder Interaktion zwischen Benutzer:innen und einer Dokumentversion geben, damit klar ist, wer wann welche Änderung vorgenommen hat. 

KOMPATIBILITÄT MIT DER VORHANDENEN IT-LANDSCHAFT 

Dokumente sollten in ihren nativen Anwendungen direkt aus dem Legal DMS geöffnet werden können. Außerdem ist es wichtig, dass Dokumente (sowohl eine Kopie als auch ein Link zum zugrunde liegenden Dokument) über das juristische DMS geteilt werden können. 

Da in der Regel eine hohe Anzahl an Dokumenten per E-Mail ausgetauscht werden, ist eine Integration mit MS Outlook und anderen E-Mail-Clients unerlässlich. So können Dokumente per E-Mail versendet werden und E-Mails und deren Anhänge lassen sich im System speichern. Aus diesem Grund ist es auch wichtig, dass Legal Document Management-Systeme das Speichern sowohl von E-Mails als auch von deren Metadaten unterstützen. 

NUMBERING 

Bei vielen Dokumenten und Versionen ist eine Nummerierungskonzept notwendig. Achten Sie daher auf Systeme, die Dokumente automatisch nummerieren, einschließlich Sach- und Versionsnummern. 

Neben den Kernfunktionen gibt es weitere wichtige Funktionen, die es bei Legal Document Management-Systemen zu beachten gilt: 

SICHERHEIT UND COMPLIANCE 

Jurist:innen müssen sicherstellen, dass das System die Compliance- und Sicherheitsstandards der Branche einhält. Achten Sie bei der Auswahl eines Legal DMS darauf, dass es über erstklassige und branchenweit anerkannte Sicherheitszertifizierungen verfügt, wie beispielsweise ISO, HIPAA und SOC. Zusätzlich sollte es über eine ausgezeichnete Infrastruktursicherheit verfügen, einschließlich Firewalls, Application-Level-Filterung, Antiviren-Scanning und Intrusion Detection, um wertvolle Informationen zu schützen. Stellen Sie außerdem sicher, dass die Daten sowohl bei der Übertragung als auch im Ruhezustand verschlüsselt sind. Auch die Anwendungssicherheit ist von entscheidender Bedeutung – wie der Passwort-Ablauf und IP-Beschränkungen für Cloud-basierte Lösungen. Jeder Legal DMS-Anbieter sollte seine Daten an mehreren Standorten sichern, um die Integrität der Daten zu gewährleisten, und zusätzlich großen Wert auf robuste Disaster-Recovery-Verfahren legen. Achten Sie auf Systeme, die gründlich und regelmäßig von externen Sicherheitsexpert:innen geprüft werden, die unter anderem Penetrationstests anbieten. Wenn Sie sich für eine Cloud-Lösung entscheiden, erfragen Sie, wo Ihre Daten gespeichert werden und vergewissern sie sich, dass die Rechenzentren über die modernsten physischen Sicherheiten verfügen. Mehr zum Thema Datensicherheit rund um unsere Softwarelösungen erfahren Sie hier. 

RECORDS MANAGEMENT 

Der Begriff “Records Management” umfasst das Verwalten, Erstellen, Verwenden und Entsorgen von Daten und Dokumenten. Es ist somit ein wichtiger Bestandteil der Risiko- und Compliance-Aktivitäten der meisten Organisationen. Daher sollte jedes Legal Document Management-System in der Lage dazu sein, Dokumenten eindeutige Identifikatoren zuzuweisen und unbefugte Änderungen an Dokumenten zu verhindern. Außerdem sollte das System das Sperren von Dokumenten erlauben, um unbefugte Änderungen zu verhindern sowie Prüfpfade für den Lebenszyklus von Dokumenten anbieten. Das System sollte auch eine Aufbewahrungsplanung unterstützen und entsprechende Regeln dafür anbieten, wie lange verschiedene Dokumente gespeichert werden sollten. Diese Regeln sollten auf Grundlage der Dokumentenart automatisch zugewiesen werden. Schließlich sollte das Legal DMS die Disposition von Dokumenten ermöglichen, welche nicht mehr aufbewahrt werden müssen. 

BERECHTIGUNGSMANAGEMENT 

Achten Sie auf Systeme, die eine rollenbasierte Rechtevergabe ermöglichen, um das Risiko eines unbefugten Zugriffs auf sensible Informationen zu reduzieren. Mit dieser Funktionalität kann der Zugriff auf Dokumente und Ordner nur für bestimmte Benutzer:innen oder Gruppen eingeschränkt werden. Manchmal reicht diese Berechtigungsstufe jedoch nicht aus, wenn bestimmte Matter und die damit verbundenen Daten nur für eine kleine Gruppe von Personen vollständig verborgen werden sollen. Nur weil man ein bestimmtes Dokument nicht sehen kann, heißt das nicht, dass die Metadaten (z.B. der Name der Matter) auch in anderen Bereichen des Systems, wie z.B. den Nachschlagewerken, verborgen bleiben. Dieser Umstand kann bei hochsensiblen Matter ein Problem darstellen. Sie sollten daher nach einem Legal DMS Ausschau halten, welches tatsächlich die gesamte Matter sperrt. Neben der Matter werden somit auch die zugehörigen Daten und Dokumente für nicht autorisierte Benutzer:innen im System ausgeblendet. 

INTEGRATIONEN 

Dokumente, insbesondere Verträge, sind Teil eines umfassenderen Lebenszyklus. Sie werden erstellt, verhandelt, überprüft, ausgeführt und verwaltet. Während Legal Document Management-Systeme beim Speichern und Versionieren helfen, verlassen sich viele Rechtsteams darüber hinaus noch auf andere Tools, um die verschiedenen Elemente des Dokumentenlebenszyklus zu unterstützen. Aus diesem Grund sollten Sie bei der Auswahl eines Legal DMS auf die Verfügbarkeit von verschiedenen Integrationen achten – sowohl auf solche die zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt zwingend erforderlich sind als auch auf solche die in Zukunft relevant werden könnten. Mindestens mit Microsoft Office und Outlook muss das System gut integrierbar sein. Die Corona-Pandemie hat auch einige Veränderungen im Arbeitsumfeld mit sich gebracht – die meisten Teams arbeiten fortan dezentral. Deshalb sollte das Legal DMS sich ebenfalls mit Tools für Zusammenarbeit und Instant Messaging wie MS Teams und Slack integrieren lassen. Ebenfalls sinnvoll ist unter diesem Aspekt auch eine Integration mit Tools für die Dokumentenerstellung sowie mit eSignatur-Tools. Vielleicht möchten Sie auch Legal DMS-Plattformen bevorzugen, die mit Tools für künstliche Intelligenz (KI) integriert sind, damit Sie Ihre Dokumente intelligent sortieren, kategorisieren und überprüfen und wichtige Daten extrahieren können. KI-Integrationen können erheblich dazu beitragen, die Qualität der Suche innerhalb Ihres Legal DMS zu verbessern.  

Juristische Dokumente gehen Hand in Hand mit Matter und Projekten. Deshalb ist eine sehr enge Abstimmung zwischen einem Legal DMS und einem Matter-Management-System unabdingbar. So können Vorgangsdaten mit Dokumenten und Rechnungen im DMS verknüpft werden und das Matter Management-System kann relevante Dokumente für einen bestimmten Vorgang heranziehen. Damit Rechtsteams effizient arbeiten können, müssen sie ihre Daten über mehrere Systeme hinweg konsolidieren und abgleichen. Eine optimale User Experience wird erzielt, wenn die Benutzer:innen nicht ständig zwischen verschiedenen Software-Tools hin- und herwechseln müssen. Alle Ihre Systeme müssen deshalb miteinander kommunizieren, damit die Anwälte einfach durch Matter und Dokumente navigieren können. Rechtsteams sollten mit dem Aufbau ihres „Legal Operations Space“ beginnen – bestehend aus einem Legal Document Management- und/ oder einem vollumfänglichen Matter Management-System, einem eBilling-System und einem Vertragsmanagement-System. 

BEREITSTELLUNGSOPTIONEN 

Beim Kauf eines Legal DMS können Sie meist zwischen zwei Hosting-Optionen wählen: On-Premise, was bedeutet, dass das System und die Dokumente in der IT-Infrastruktur Ihres Unternehmens gehostet und gespeichert werden, und Cloud, wo sie auf sicheren Remote-Servern in einem oder mehreren Rechenzentren gehostet und gespeichert werden. Mittlerweile ist eine dritte Option denkbar – die hybride Speicherung – bei der die Anwendung in der Cloud gehostet wird, die Dokumente und Daten aber vor Ort gespeichert werden. 

Die Vorteile der Cloud liegen in der schnellen Bereitstellung, der Skalierbarkeit und den geringeren Betriebs- und Wartungskosten. On-Premise- und Hybrid-Lösungen eignen sich jedoch für Organisationen, die mehr Kontrolle über ihre Daten wünschen und höhere Sicherheitsanforderungen haben. Organisationen wie Finanzinstitute benötigen ein sehr hohes Maß an Sicherheit. Während einige Cloud-Anbieter diese Standards erfüllen können, werden andere Organisationen immer auf On-Premise-Implementierungen bestehen. Stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie Ihre Bereitstellung und Dokumenten-Hosting Anforderungen kennen und ihr Legal DMS diese erfüllt. 

KOLLABORATION UND PRODUKTIVITÄT 

Ein gutes Legal Document Management-System erleichtert Ihnen und Ihrem Team die alltägliche Arbeit enorm. Die Zusammenarbeit an Dokumenten verlagert sich zunehmend ins Internet mit Tools zum gemeinsamen Erstellen von Dokumenten – einschließlich der Dokumente, die in MS Office Online enthalten sind. Das Team kann in Echtzeit gemeinsam an Dokumenten arbeiten. Deshalb sollte das Legal DMS Kollaborationstools und Integrationen anbieten, die den Benutzer:innen helfen, Dokumente nicht nur zu speichern und zu finden, sondern auch gemeinsam an ihnen zu arbeiten. Achten Sie auf Legal DMS-Plattformen, die eine Reihe von Kollaborationsfunktionen bieten – von Co-Authoring bis hin zu Kommentaren und Genehmigungen. Da immer mehr Mitarbeiter:innen an entfernten Standorten arbeiten, sollten Sie auch prüfen, ob das Legal DMS über Tools verfügt, die asynchrones Arbeiten in räumlich verteilten Teams ermöglichen und unterstützen. KI-basierte Tools stellen intelligente Suchfunktionen bereit, somit haben Benutzer:innen besseren Zugriff auf juristisches Know-How – ein erheblicher Vorteil in der Nutzung von Kollaborationstools. 

Ein Legal DMS kann die Arbeitsweise Ihres gesamten Rechtsteams nachhaltig verändern – sowohl in Bezug auf die Zusammenarbeit als auch in Bezug auf Wissen. Es bringt Ordnung in das Chaos der juristischen Dokumente und schafft ein sicheres und durchsuchbares Repository, mit dem Ihr Team schnell und einfach auf die benötigten Dokumente zugreifen kann. Mit den richtigen Integrationen und Funktionen ermöglicht es, den gesamten Lebenszyklus von Dokumenten zu verwalten, und macht Ihr Rechtsteam mit verschiedenen Kollaborations-Tools produktiver. 

Beenden Sie die endlose Dokumenten-Suche in E-Mails, lokalen Ordnern und freigegebenen Laufwerken und machen Sie den Sprung zu einem modernen DMS für die Rechtsabteilung. Wir hoffen, dass unsere Tipps Sie und Ihr Team auf den Weg in eine effiziente und produktive Zukunft bringen, in der die Arbeit mit Dokumenten ein Vergnügen und keine lästige Pflicht ist. 

Embracing the Paradigm Shift: Enterprise Legal Management and AI

Posted on November 30, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

This article was first published on LegalDive. 

The history of enterprise legal management (ELM) is a study of slow-moving but immensely consequential shifts in purpose, mission and access. For several years, ELM was limited to matter management and spend management. After that, the first paradigm shift occurred when the best ELM platforms began to facilitate engagement, focus on process, offer a user-friendly environment, empower organizations and enable management of many other legal methods.

The second paradigm shift is happening now, taking advantage of the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology. Today, the top ELM tools combine the powers of artificial intelligence with existing ELM rules to offer a game-changing solution for legal teams. This combination enables legal to operate faster, more accurately, and more efficiently — in everything from invoice processing and contract management to vendor management and many other tasks.

Just as critical to legal departments are the data insights that this new combination provides. ELM’s embrace of AI empowers organizations to look between the rules to find missed savings, provide real-time invoice error detection and analyze how vendors and bill reviewers perform.

So, with all the insights and efficiency this combination of AI and ELM can provide, why are some still hesitant to embrace the change? The embrace of this paradigm shift is not universal – and their arguments deserve examination.

Let’s look at the three most common arguments against AI:

It’s not worth the hype.

The most common blowback against this is simple: AI-enabled technology isn’t worth the hype.

“We have yet to see AI tools in this industry that fully replace people or processes,” one e-discovery specialist says in a LegalTech News piece. “They are better marketed as augmenting a procedure, improving the performance of a team or workstream, or adding automation and precision to workflows.”

True, AI is not sufficiently advanced to replace lawyers or remove critical thinking from processes, but this does not mean there isn’t a huge amount of value in what AI can do now. Where AI excels is in augmenting the work of legal professionals (typically the stuff they don’t want to do), providing insight from large, unstructured, unseen data and automation of simple, highly repetitive tasks. So, while AI is not a “magic bullet,” it offers genuine benefits, not just the reduction of “time spent in the process” but improvements to consistency, transparency, and mitigation of risk, all of which directly impact the top and bottom lines of your business.

To unlock these benefits, look for vendors that have a clear roadmap and will work with your organization to develop a successful rollout plan and deploy their AI+ELM solution to augment and enhance your capabilities.

It doesn’t solve our specific problems.

Transparency in the selection process will go a long way toward choosing a product that does solve those specific issues. Legal technology vendors should clearly lay out the purpose of their AI solution. What problems will it solve? What is the implementation process? What kind of support and training will they provide? What does the return on investment (ROI) look like? On the user side, legal departments must do their homework with stakeholders before they rush into buying a tech solution. Legal should have a clear picture of success and should come prepared with use cases to illustrate the desired outcome.

“Technology for technology’s sake” isn’t a solution. As much as AI can be used, there remains a bigger challenge of whether it will be used. Understanding the use case, implementation, and return on investment are especially important; bringing in nascent technology means you must have a strong change management process. Understanding how the organization will adopt the technology and including all key individuals — from the influencers to the naysayers — are critical to the successful rollout of AI.

With that type of transparency and communication, organizations can find the right vendor for their project needs. Remember this quote from business leader Andrew Shimek when embarking on the search:

“You shouldn’t chase AI in a vacuum,” one industry expert said in an Iltacon panel. “You should think about what are the problems that we have that need to be solved. And if AI is a critical tool that can help solve that faster and better, not at the expense of quality, let’s adopt it. But I think it’s use-case first and AI second—not AI in a vacuum.”

It doesn’t provide the data for success.

Nowadays, many AI solutions are trained out of the box, eliminating the need to collect enormous amounts of data to get started. Of course, to create a highly custom solution, you will need to spend time collecting data, training, and validating. This can be difficult and risky.

Like any digital transformation, you should ask yourself whether you are innovating to sustain the existing approach (by making it faster, more efficient, cheaper, etc.) or disrupting the existing one. Most innovation is centered around sustaining innovation — of which success comes through iteration, not giant leaps. “Don’t let best get in the way of better” is a great motto to remember.

Starting with out-of-the-box solutions that might not be an exact fit BUT offer a faster pathway to value and building internal support for such a transformation is a secure way of creating success, helping you learn, measure and prepare for more customized solutions in the future.

Embracing the paradigm shift

McKinsey’s State of AI survey in 2021 shows that AI adoption continues to grow with significant benefits; most respondents say that adopting AI has resulted in a demonstrable positive impact. In fact, a report from the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) that adoption of AI by legal teams doubled from 2020 to 2021 – from one in 10 teams to one in five.

Legal professionals everywhere are embracing the AI+ELM paradigm shift. On its most basic level, AI platforms can augment and improve both legal and business processes for corporate legal departments, law firms, contract professionals, and procurement teams. With the focused mission of helping business professionals get more work done faster, an AI engine can automate the existing repetitive, manual, and costly legal processes, enabling continuous learning and workflow improvements. The best intelligence platforms combine advanced AI techniques with workflow management to empower organizations with AI that not only finds and reports on things but does things for you.

The bottom line? While AI is not coming for lawyers’ jobs — and won’t be any time soon — the most innovative, forward-thinking legal departments recognize this paradigm shift and are acting to bolster their arsenal with AI-enabled workflow management solutions.

Learn how Onit’s ELM solutions can help your enterprise embrace this paradigm shift.