Category: Artificial Intelligence

Bringing Workflows and AI to Life for Legal Ops: A Conversation with Harbor  

Posted on June 19, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events

Jean Yang, co-founder and vice president of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence, recently chatted with Amy Good, vice president of client engagement at Harbor Consulting, about the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence to provide an ecosystem of workflow solutions — and what they can do for you. (You can view the entire video here).

Generative AI has become a modern-age gold rush, taking this brave new world — and its collective imagination — by storm. Legal operations is no exception. Integrating workflows with artificial intelligence (AI) can unlock a new level of efficiency for legal departments, especially at a time when any definition of success extends to driving innovation while containing costs.

According to Amy Good, the adoption of AI-powered workflows tends to follow three stages:

  1. A corporate legal department notices an abundance of manual tasks can be automated.
  2. As legal service requests (LSRs) pour in, legal leaders realize more connectivity to other parts of the organization is warranted and they implement a matter management system.
  3. Others build upon that foundation, continuing to improve legal tech throughout the organization’s journey.

Still, customers often wonder: What can AI do for us? Where — how — do we begin? Good’s advice? “Look for a place of demand.”

A Game-Changer for Efficiency

Chartered principally as protector of the business, it is Legal’s purpose to examine every detail of a deal for compliance and risk mitigation. However, the need to respond faster is paramount in this macroeconomic climate. The 2023 Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report uncovered that only a third (35%) of enterprise employees perceive their legal team as very responsive. Jean Yang noted that this is an area of opportunity to do more work in an efficient manner.

“Some clients have multiple places of requests from outside law departments routing to the center of excellence (COE) or administrative pools,” elaborated Good. These might include outside counsel vendor onboarding, approval requests, or information collection, such as structured reporting on diversity or vendor performance. “Often they are looking for self-service — any processes to fully automate, like non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).” These might include outside counsel vendor onboarding, approval requests, or information collection, such as structured reporting on diversity or vendor performance.

“We hear that, too. Attorneys don’t want to spend time on low-level contracts, but they need to get done,” Yang concurred.

This is where workflow automation and AI step in. With contract management an essential aspect of legal operations, constant demands, requests, and “fire drills” land on attorneys’ desks.

When there is too much important work to do and not enough time, AI adds intelligence to workflow by automatically populating LSR fields. According to Yang, “AI can remove friction and engage with processes and tools by really knowing how to route things to the appropriate person at the appropriate time with the appropriate level of priority.”

Being able to extract metadata on a mass basis to understand the information in contracts reduces time-consuming, manual, and not particularly invigorating tasks, Good agreed. In turn, this significantly streamlines workflows and elevates efficiency, freeing up Legal’s valuable time for more strategic, visionary, and materially impactful work.

Connecting Workflows and AI

At the 2023 CLOC Global Institute, Yang — along with a distinguished panel — demonstrated three practical and impactful ways of how the legal space can optimize AI: reviewing invoices for compliance and value with spend management, using AI as a co-pilot to run playbooks and perform legacy agreement extraction for contract review, and auto-generating LSRs from plain text communications like emails.

Following the standing-room-only presentation, seven in 10 (70%) legal professionals admitted to feeling positive about AI. And in Harbor’s latest Law Department Survey, 29% of respondents state they already implement workflow automation, while 26% use AI for at least one use case — up 10 and 11 percentage points, respectively, from the previous year.

This revolution may have been sparked by ChatGPT and other AI language models, such as Google’s Bard, truly bringing AI to the mainstream.

“Generative AI has strong legal comprehension and can generate billions of interactions,” Yang said, pointing out that GPT-4, the latest version, even passed the Uniform Bar Exam. Though some legal practitioners remain terrified this means AI will usurp jobs, there are limitations to the technology — including ‘hallucinations,’ the term for factually incorrect or meaningless information generated because of encoding and decoding errors.

Yang acknowledges that while generative AI will never be 100%, by understanding legal challenges and pain points AI can now feasibly and realistically assist with a range of processes — from leveraging immediate insights from spend and contract data to building apps more quickly.

“In the past year, AI seems to be coming together in a way it hasn’t before,” Good marveled. This includes data sets and tech infrastructure to make workflows faster, smarter, and more transformational.

The Future is Now

As a subject matter expert (SME) herself, Yang suggested exploring various use cases when asked about the best way to approach AI.

Good seconded experimentation, sharing that ChatGPT has often helped her transcend writer’s block and describing it like a conversation with a nonjudgmental friend to move you to the next step.

“Start small and gain momentum,” she advised.

Similarly, both emphasized the importance of working with vendors who are continuously future-proofing. One caveat? Always work with vendors with commercial licenses.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter where your organization is today — some companies are already ‘there’ with AI, while others are still being cautious, watching and learning.

“The key,” Yang said, “is to learn and engage with what this tech means: Get demos, play along, see what’s coming. Because the hype is real. AI is here, and it will be impactful in many ways.”

Learn more about how Onit’s AI-enabled products digitally transform the contract lifecycle.

Generative AI in Legal: What Are the Opportunities?

Posted on June 9, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Note: originally published on the CLOC.org blog. 

The rapid growth of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to fuel seismic changes throughout every aspect of the business world. A quick glance at recent headlines gives a good sense of just how the expanding power of AI-spawned text, images, and media is reverberating:

  • Google added the power of Generative AI to its search engine, allowing users to receive AI-generated summaries to select queries.
  • IBM is launching a new “WatsonX” studio for organizations to create their own generative AI workflows.
  • A Goldman Sachs survey forecast “significant disruption” to labor worldwide from Generative AI — potentially affecting up to 300 million jobs.

The legal industry will be in the middle of the Generative AI revolution. But what will that transformation look like for the legal world — and how can the industry best take advantage of its promises and potential?

Three areas of transformation

These three legal areas will see meaningful opportunities for value from generative AI:

  • SPEND MANAGEMENT. Generated AI can also boost departments’ ability to make sense of their tens of thousands of lines of invoice data by delivering insights into value, helping departments understand exactly what they are paying for. These quick, accessible insights are a powerful way to stop the attorney habit of “rubber-stamping” invoices and address capacity concerns for busy departments. It also increases the quality and speed of invoice review, flagging patterns that can violate billing guidelines (especially for lengthy, complex invoices).

Additionally, generative AI can assist with vendor management — particularly tough conversations around rate, value and performance. When backed by detailed, insightful data, it is easier to have productive, emotion-free, and surprise-free conversations.

EXAMPLE: Invoice summarization. Onit integration with ChatGPT provides a quick, insightful summary of a contract’s tasks to analyze overall value – allowing users to glimpse into the hours spent per task, the work done by specific timekeepers, and much more.

  • CONTRACTING. With Generative AI’s ability to generate content such as summaries and redlines, Contracting is a natural place where the technology will have significant impact. In fact, contracting is one area where we see more mainstream adoption of AI — for example, most of Onit’s CLM customers use AI in contracting. Fueling this growth? The improvement in legal comprehension by Generative AI; for example, GPT4 passed the bar exam, scoring in the top 90th percentile on one 2023 tryout. These advancements mean the industry can use AI as a co-pilot to run contract playbooks. AI serves as a powerful tool to help reduce some of the repetitive manual work plaguing this part of the process and improve consistency.

What about post-signature? In an era of constant mergers and acquisitions, regulation and compliance demands, companies often find themselves with questions about the contracts in their repository. AI-driven analysis gives a valuable look into these contracts and their clause libraries, allowing the new company to quickly identify risks and remediate them.

EXAMPLE: Contract analysis. Onit’s AI Co-Pilot sits alongside you as you review your contract. You can ask it to spot issues, suggest redlining, compare against your template language and flag deviations from your standards.

  • LEGAL REQUESTS. This impact is one our CLOC panel and audience were extremely excited about; sometimes, the most beneficial use of AI is to remove manual work (like form filling), remove friction and encourage the adoption of our tools and processes. AI technology can help to kick off the workflow with minimal user intervention, automating legal request creation, determining routing priorities, and establishing tracking — removing significant administrative tasks for attorneys. It can also assist as the “first response,” automating common business requests before they go to Legal.

EXAMPLE: Creating a legal request. Onit’s AI integration can read an email chain and automatically generate a legal request.

This is what our audience at CLOC 2023 said when we asked them about the impact of Generative AI. Do you agree with their thoughts?

Word cloud of Generative AI's impact on Legal
CLOC Session word cloud

As Legal takes its next steps into the AI world, it’s a good idea to have these general principles in mind:

  • Be future-minded. Seek out vendors with a clear, future-proofed vision and plan for generative AI in their product. Additionally, look to partner with organizations prioritizing privacy and security with AI; they should offer commercial licenses that protect privacy. Once partnerships and processes are in place, layer the technology on top of that solid foundation to ensure successful rollout and implementation.
  • Keep on top of technology. Designate some time for yourself or ask a team to keep up with the possibilities and enhancements of Generative AI. In a world where rapid advancements happen weekly (if not daily), education and knowledge are king.
  • Address the fear of the unknown. The disruptive effects of new technology can be intimidating for many. Don’t rush or push anyone into this new world; encourage them to learn and engage with the space, focus on opportunities and use carefully tested and validated tools.

Learn more about how Onit’s AI-enabled products digitally transform the contract lifecycle.

Experts Evaluate the Potential of Legal Contract Management Software and AI  

Posted on March 23, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Legal contract management software also referred to as contract lifecycle management, has made significant headway in the world of in-house counsel, racking up impressive stats such as reducing the average sales cycle by 24% and saving 9% on annual average costs. But what happens when you combine legal contract management software with AI?

A panel of legal and AI experts from organizations including Adobe and Onit, presented at Legalweek on just this topic, examining the potential impact of AI on managing contracts and how to start implementing AI into your contract management workflows. The conversation touched on the business value of using AI in legal ops, the efficiencies AI can bring to your business and future trends in AI, among other things.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways for AI and legal contract management software.

How to get started with AI

One of the easiest places for legal departments to start using contract AI and automation is in common use cases like reviewing NDAs and other routine contracts because these are high-value but time-consuming activities. The need to increase speed is high, but the risk is relatively low.

On the applicability of AI to law

AI has strong applications to both the business side of law and the practice of law. From a business perspective, contract AI can help with important, routine tasks like invoice review and billing. As for the practice of law, AI is ideal for tasks like tracking 20 different clauses in the 56,000 NDAs you handle each year, significantly boosting productivity and efficiency.

Do your research

To get the most out of your AI tools, you want your relationship with your technology vendor to be a true partnership, and you want to apply your own judgment to why your solutions are doing what they’re doing. With both your vendor and your solution, you want to retain a certain level of control to ensure you’re getting the results you want.

Have a strategy

When you start implementing AI with your legal contract management software, you don’t want to be thinking just six or twelve months down the road but further down the horizon. When you create a longer-term vision, you’ll be better able to take into account the needs of your various stakeholders and secure their buy-in for your chosen AI solutions.

Laying the groundwork for adoption

Many companies find it easiest to start with a single use case or data set and train their AI models from there. Once you have your first success, it will be easier to roll out your new technology across other business units and the organization as a whole.

AI and compliance

When you use AI for contract lifecycle management, your tools can help you stay on top of the constantly changing federal and state regulatory landscape. AI can assess your legacy contracts against new regulatory changes and ensure that any necessary updates are made.

Contract AI and CLM

AI helps in the pre-signature phase of contracts by creating centralized workflows for contract management and templates that allow your team to draft, review and redline contracts with just a click. AI also assists in the post-signature phase by extracting actionable intelligence from your contracts that can serve as the basis for informed decision-making.

On justifying spending money on AI to the C-suite

According to a recent study, users saw on average a 51.5% gain in productivity after using AI for contract review. That’s an almost immediate gain in productivity, and some use cases saw even better results. Moreover, the efficiency continued to increase over time as users became more familiar with the tools and the tools got smarter. The data extraction capabilities of AI contract tools also help to reduce risk and stop revenue leakage, which has a positive financial impact on the business as a whole.

Future trends in AI

While AI was originally targeted more toward law firms, the focus has shifted to in-house teams. We’re likely to see an even greater emphasis on using AI in contract drafting and CLM this year.

If you’d like to learn more about AI and contract lifecycle management, here are two helpful webinar replays:

  • The Future of Contracting: CLM + AI Transformation at Lenovo – Every company needs a faster and more efficient contracting process that enhances risk and spend management, improves revenue and profit margins, and increases visibility into counterparty relationships. The Lenovo Legal Department’s transformation journey is delivering value to the business by centralizing the global legal transactional support resources, standardizing the contract process across the company and optimizing the process with technology.
  • AI Mythbusters: Deprogramming Misconceptions – Confusion and misinformation around what Artificial Intelligence is and how it works is widespread, particularly in the legal technology space. Watch this webinar to debunk ten common misconceptions and learn how to decipher marketing-speak to separate true AI from just software.

Introducing Onit Catalyst – Upping the AI Game for ELM and CLM

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Legal Operations

Since the birth of artificial intelligence at a conference held at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956, it has made rapid strides. In recent years, AI has garnered considerable investment; as of the end of 2020, the top 100 AI startups globally had a combined valuation of over $258 billion.

However, in some regards, AI technology has become a commodity, with many of the technologies being part of the open source community. Its application to specific business or technical use cases that depend on models built by a combination of data scientists and engineers, functional or industry experts, and a large amount of curated data makes AI a valuable business contributor.

We have been at the forefront of incorporating AI technology into our product as we seek to add more customer value through automation and intelligence. Beyond AI-based products developed in-house, we have acquired various AI-based products and technologies to bolster our capabilities.

We are excited to announce the new brand name of our AI-enabled products purpose-built to transform ELM and CLM is Onit Catalyst. A chemical catalyst is an inert substance, but when added to a reaction, it accelerates it. Onit is applying AI in the same way – combining it with your data, use cases, and other Onit products – to accelerate the value you receive from it. The Onit Catalyst products were previously marketed under the Precedent and Bodhala brands.

Onit Catalyst provides actionable insights from legal matters or contract data through better reporting, dashboards, benchmarks, and legal business intelligence. They can be implemented alongside an existing third-party ELM or CLM implementation or with the OnitX platform, to which they have tight and seamless integrations. With Onit Catalyst, we have done the data science for you. In addition, our AI Center of Excellence has applied AI and other analytic techniques to address real and practice use cases related to enterprise legal management and contract lifecycle management. Powering the Onit Catalyst products is a dataset that includes $47B+ in legal billings, over 200,000 timekeepers, 8,900 law firms, and more than 1 million assisted legal interactions each year.

Below are the products within the Onit Catalyst family:

Onit Catalyst for ELM
Proactive law firm management using legal business intelligence so legal can run like a business		Onit Catalyst for CLM
Smart management of legal documents via process automation, augmentation, and intelligence
Onit Catalyst Report Cards
Onit Catalyst Quarterly Business Review
Onit Catalyst Rate Benchmarking
Onit Catalyst Matter Benchmarking
Onit Catalyst Rate Proposal Analyzer
Onit Catalyst Comparative Analysis		Onit Catalyst ReviewAI
Onit Catalyst Contract Extraction

Onit Catalyst products will always work best with the OnitX platform to form smart solutions that provide insights at the point of decision and need.

Contact us to learn how Onit Catalyst can enhance your ELM and CLM workflows today.

From Manual to Magical: The Power of AI in Contract Management

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

World Commerce & Contracting states, “Smarter contracting is a new vision for how modern enterprises should experience contracting. A vision that elevates the role of contracts as a source of the real-time data needed to manage the complexity of today’s business environment.”

Contract management is a vital process in any business, and it can be complex and time-consuming. However, contracts are the backbone of any business relationship and must be well-managed to satisfy all parties involved. Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software has been around for some time, but the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) re-introduced innovation to this field. Whether you are part of corporate legal, procurement, or sales operations, you need reliable tools to streamline workflows, reduce manual workloads, and increase productivity. So, what’s required to make this vision a reality?

By 2024, Gartner predicts a 50% reduction in manual effort for contract review % due to the adoption of AI-based contract analytics solutions. While technology is a vital part of this puzzle, it needs to be approached differently. AI-powered CLM is the way businesses go from manual to magical. AI is infinitely more effective when closely interwoven into enterprise functions connecting people, integrating systems and data, and facilitating the flow of intelligence.

Introducing Onit’s Smart CLM Solution

This is why Onit developed Smart CLM. Onit’s Smart CLM solution streamlines the contract management process pre- and post-signature, reducing the time and resources required to manage contracts. The solution uses AI to automate the review of contracts and extract essential data from them, such as key terms and obligations, dates, and other relevant information. As a result, businesses can quickly and easily identify potential risks and opportunities in their contracts, which can help them make informed decisions and negotiate better terms.

Key to Onit’s Smart CLM is the tight integration of OnitX CLM with two new products, Onit Catalyst ReviewAI and Contract Extraction. Catalyst ReviewAI utilizes advanced AI algorithms to analyze and extract key contract data points, such as dates, clauses, and obligations. As a result, you can quickly identify potential risks and issues and prioritize your work accordingly. By using ReviewAI, you can locate misaligned contract terms and missed renewal dates, reducing the risk of errors or misinterpretation. In addition, with powerful analytics and reporting capabilities enhanced by the Risk Analysis Dashboard, you can make informed decisions, negotiate better contract terms, and reduce your organization’s legal risk.

Contracts are only sometimes in a centralized repository, obligations are ambiguous, rules and regulations constantly change, and market trends and business decisions can send you in different directions. The newest addition to Onit’s Smart CLM solution, Catalyst Contract Extraction, solves this challenge and creates structure from unstructured contracts by automating and augmenting contract data extraction to report and act on previously hidden information. Catalyst Contract Extraction uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the text in contracts and identify key phrases and clauses. It also uses advanced machine learning algorithms to automate bulk contract migration and accelerate the repapering process; Contract Extraction also locates poor data and contract clauses that may impact your contract’s compliance.

With Contract Extraction, you can reduce the time and resources required for legacy contract migration, manual document review, and management, ultimately minimizing the risk of errors or misinterpretation.

The Benefits of Onit’s Smart CLM Solution

One of the most significant benefits of using AI in contract management is that it can save time and reduce errors. Manual contract review is a time-consuming, error-prone process, especially when dealing with large volumes of contracts. With Onit Smart CLM, businesses can automate much of the review process, significantly reducing the time and resources required. As a result, companies can focus on more strategic activities, such as negotiating better terms and managing relationships with their partners.

Another benefit of using Smart CLM is that it can help businesses identify potential risks and opportunities in their contracts. By extracting essential data from contracts, companies can quickly identify areas of risk exposure, such as non-compliance with regulations or breaches of confidentiality. As a result, you can now proactively mitigate these risks and protect their business interests. Similarly, by identifying contract opportunities, businesses can negotiate better terms and improve their bottom line.

Onit’s Smart CLM, comprised of OnitX, Catalyst ReviewAI, and Catalyst Contract Extraction, is designed to help enterprise business professionals work more efficiently, make informed decisions, increase compliance, and reduce the legal risk for their organizations. By automating much of the contract review process, businesses can save time and resources, reduce errors, and identify potential risks and opportunities in their contracts. In addition, with the help of AI, companies can manage their contracts more efficiently and effectively, ultimately leading to better business outcomes. So why wait? Try Onit’s Smart CLM today and see the difference they can make for your enterprise.

Schedule a call with us today to see how Onit’s Smart CLM can help your organization.

The Top Six Leading Corporate Legal Operations Trends for 2022

Posted on February 17, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

The pandemic changed everything about our world seemingly in the blink of an eye—corporate legal operations included. However, with change comes opportunity: to unlock novel technology solutions and discover cutting-edge ways of catapulting efficiency and catalyzing transformation for enterprise-wide excellence.

Consider these six corporate legal operations trends, compiled from the latest metrics and data, to tackle your ever-evolving law department challenges.

1. Turning Budgets into Roadmaps

Corporate legal departments are projected to triple their legal technology budgets by 2025, according to Gartner’s 2021 Legal Planning & Budgeting report. Additionally, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) 2021 State of the Industry Report revealed that technology implementation is increasing, a triumph in efficiency for legal operations professionals who often tend to handle as many as five different business areas.

Not surprisingly, efficiency is the principal motivator encouraging general counsel (GC) and chief legal officers (CLOs) in $1B+ organizations to purchase new tech. With legal operations teams seeking to streamline and automate workflows, these purchases prove more than the sum of their parts. They are an integral part of “a defined and actionable legal systems roadmap,” the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) 2021 Legal Technology Report for In-House Counsel says. In fact, 32 percent of respondents in Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey believe that procuring state-of-the-art e-signature, e-billing and contact management tools have supplied them with the ability to “provide actionable KPIs and reporting without significant manual effort,” maximizing time, energy and expenses saved.

2. Championing Diversity and Inclusion

Not only do diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives contribute to more robust work quality and skyrocket a competitive edge, they simply encapsulate the right thing to do. Still, despite an American Bar Association (ABA) ‘s Model Diversity Survey determining a marked leap in diversity among in-house counsel senior leadership, only 11.5% of GCs at Fortune 1000 companies were ethnic or racial minorities.

There is good news, though: post-pandemic, the number-one priority that legal operations professionals cite is implementing a D&I program.

Bloomberg’s 2021 Legal Operations Survey concluded that diversity is bolstered by both tracking metrics and introducing new processes, such as internal diversity training, more remote work opportunities and forward-thinking recruiting patterns. Also imperative? Holding vendors, namely law firms, responsible for the same standards of diversity and inclusion.

Three trailblazing companies that have elevated D&I are Intel, Uber and Novartis AG. Corporate legal departments can start by asking their current law firms to complete the ABA Model Diversity Survey and combining that data with D&I information from RFPs in a centralized legal solution.

3. Bridging Cybersecurity and Compliance Gaps

With data breaches on the inevitable rise and the average cost of a breach $4.24 million, it’s no wonder that 57% of the respondents in an ACC survey noted the urgency of having a “comprehensive data management strategy to ensure compliance, defensibility and security.”

Legal operations are an essential puzzle piece in comprehensive cybersecurity. Law.com stresses that organizations collaborate with IT to conduct data security and privacy measure audits focusing on consumer protection. The American Bar Association revealed that only 43% of those surveyed use encryption, and only 39% execute multi-factor authentication. Because remote work protocols dramatically augment technical vulnerabilities and cost over $1M more per breach, investing in a secure multi-factor authentication tool is fundamental for risk management.

4. Capturing the Power of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a visionary trick in sci-fi flicks: its tech has helped lawyers and legal operations professionals analyze data patterns and generate business insights.

AI has proven especially vital in legal contract review software by reviewing thousands of contracts simultaneously, migrating legacy contracts and exporting data in under five seconds. Studies show that its functional aptitude for performing first-pass reviews makes even the newest users more than 51% productive and 34% efficient.

Those percentages provide a compelling argument for AI when extrapolated across a legal department. Whereas an average company has 55 lawyers who review a total of 9,526 contracts annually, AI can propel the same legal team to process 4,906 more each year. That’s analogous to hiring 28 additional lawyers!

Another bonus? Saving in-house counsel countless hours while circumventing the 9.2% average value “leakage.”

5. Realizing the Win-Win of AFAs

Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have often been branded with a bad reputation. That’s likely due to many legal departments fearing they may pay more with an AFA than an hourly fee. However, the tide is slowly changing as the average amount of AFA revenue across AmLaw 200 firms has consistently increased since 2018.

However, AFAs –which offer benefits for spend management over traditional billable hours—can be incredibly advantageous for clients, legal operations teams and law firms. They provide more control over spend, more reliable billing and a greater capacity for companies to remain on budget.

Generally, the more flexible an AFA, the more appealing it is. Utilizing spend management software to analyze current AFAs and compare vendor rates can help make enterprise-changing decisions.

6. Navigating Data-Driven Vendor Processes

According to a survey of GCs, vendor management is their top priority. This is even though CLOC’s State of the Industry Report revealed only 27% of legal department respondents formally reviewed law firm performance. In such an absence of vendor evaluation guidelines, how can return on investment (ROI) be determined?

This is where legal technology software shines. By assisting legal operations teams in orchestrating a formal vendor performance review process, it can also track vendor metrics, billing compliance, accruals and spend totals, shifting to a data-driven strategy and the most cost-effective business resolutions.

Whether it’s accelerating staff, budget or technology, each of these legal operations trends shares one element: in today’s rapidly metamorphosing world, they are becoming more critical by the day. Embracing change and advancing unrivaled growth with enterprise legal management software, contract management and transformational vendor and diversity programs will revolutionize legal operations in 2022—and long into the future.

Read more about these top legal operations trends by downloading our latest white paper.

Benefits of Contract Lifecycle Management Software

Posted on January 25, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

How CLM can Increase Revenue 9%

When it comes to contract lifecycle management software, one thing is sure: It’s on everyone’s radar. Consider these findings from the Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2021 Legal Technology Report for In-House Counsel:

  • Contract management software was ranked as one of the top three most effective technologies, behind only matter management and e-billing.
  • 77% of participants said they want technology to help them better manage contracts.
  • 56% said they are looking into investing in contract lifecycle management software.
  • 81% in the $500M to $999M range said they are looking into a contract management software upgrade, while 44% of companies under $100M in revenue are doing the same.

It’s no surprise that interest is high. Contracting delays impact the entire enterprise, stalling revenue generation, new services, valuable partnerships and more. Outdated technologies (those that can’t integrate or scale, for example) and manual processes offer further complications, especially when considering the high volume of contracts and the often limited resources available to manage legal obligations.

What are the Benefits of Contract Lifecycle Management Software?

The World Commerce & Contracting organization estimates that improved contract development and management can increase profitability to the tune of 9% of a company’s annual revenue.

How does it accomplish this? It supercharges the speed of contracting with technology. Companies using contract management software soon find numerous advantages such as:

  • Self-service to create new contracts without legal intervention. Departments can select contracts from approved templates and the solution can facilitate a legal review of any deviations from approved language.
  • Easy access to all contracts stored in one repository, making it more effective to maintain compliance with audit and governance requirements.
  • Reduction of duplicative work by integrating contract data into order management, purchasing and invoicing systems.
  • Greater insight into risks, obligations and new laws and regulations through reporting and analytics
  • More transparent processes, with the status of any contract only a click away.
  • Faster contract turnaround with the help of automation, which steers each contract through its appropriate review cycle while providing automated updates to involved parties as necessary.
  • Reduced risk through consistent contract language upheld in the system via templates and contract playbooks.

Contract Management + AI – An Advantage for the Entire Enterprise

When you combine AI and contract management, the benefits multiple rapidly for everyone who depends on contracts.

Consider how AI helps first-pass review. It acts as a junior lawyer, making recommendations and delivering a risk profile. This makes the overall review process much quicker, including reviews by other lawyers. Instead of reviewing the contract, redlining it and adding clauses, an attorney opens up a contract with all of this already performed by AI. In fact, a study found that legal AI contract review software made new users 51.5% more productive and 34% more efficient.

When you apply a 51.5% productivity boost in the context of a typical midsize company, that boost translates into serious results. If you have 55 lawyers reviewing an average of 9,500 contracts, the same team can process an additional 4,900 contracts with contract AI. That’s the equivalent of adding 28 lawyers to the team.

Of course, the legal obligations continue after signature, and AI also supports that process. Contracts offer a wealth of usable data that should be harnessed. Their proper management ensures that the terms of the agreement are fulfilled and helps assess if the company is meeting expected business results. For most teams, this work is currently done manually or not done at all.

AI dramatically increases the efficiency and scope of data extraction, turning data into actionable information in several ways, including:

  • Batch review, by extracting data from multiple legal documents at once
  • Repapering, by amending or redlining contract details and critical terms to comply with regulatory changes or M&A activities
  • Contract abstraction, by identifying critical legal clauses, terms and details in documents for easy analysis and syncing with your CLM.
  • Audit compliance by automating large-scale legal contract review when regulatory changes occur and exporting relevant details in notes and reports
  • Due diligence through the automation of batch review of contracts for routine legal due diligence, freeing up resources
  • Legacy contract migration by rapidly analyzing and extracting legacy contract metadata, including critical dates, terms, and clauses, to assist in importing

AI won’t replace lawyers, but it will provide significant benefits when paired with contracting. This infographic on the benefits of AI and contract management breaks down the quantitative benefits of AI and contract management, including today’s contract burdens, their costs and how AI can accelerate sales cycles by up to 24%.

Additional Contract Management and AI Resources

Ready to start evaluating contract management solutions? Here are a few resources that may help:

How AI and Enterprise Legal Management Find Hidden Legal Invoice Review Errors

Posted on January 13, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal invoice review and validation is a significant pain point for most companies and legal departments. In a recent survey, legal operations professionals cited their top three challenges as:

  1. Business process improvements (59.7%)
  2. Cost containment and savings (49.3%)
  3. Staying abreast of law department technology (35.8%)

All three of these items apply to legal invoice review, where outdated processes and technologies, combined with increasing workloads, more often than not lead to lost time, compliance risks, reputational risks, possible fraud, unnecessary payments and more.

Then there are the invoice charges that manage to fly under the radar. These are ones that slip by preset e-billing rules and human review, leading to the approval of invoices with potential erroneous charges like nonworking travel, block billing, vague descriptions and work done by improper staff class.

How Corporate Legal Can “Right-Size” Legal Invoice Review

Billing tasks don’t have to take up more of your time than identifying and mitigating risks to your company. AI, combined with enterprise legal management and e-billing rules, helps companies more accurately and efficiently process invoices.

Now, we’re introducing a high-level guide titled “How to Find ‘Between the Rules’ Invoice Errors” that discusses how AI, combined with ELM and billing rules, is revolutionizing legal invoice review.

Here are just a few of the highlights you’ll find in the Quick Start Guide.

  • The Limitations of Billing Rules: With paper invoices, in-house counsel never had time to review every line item. eBilling relieved a lot of strain by applying billing rules, which scour the invoices for keywords and parameters that might conflict with billing guidelines. However, because these rules cannot represent all potential billing language, they open the door for “between the rules” errors.
  • How AI-Powered Invoice Review Software Fills the Gap: Unlike traditional e-billing tools, AI-enabled invoice review solutions are constantly learning, searching for discrepancies and improving invoice review via machine learning. For example, an unauthorized travel charge may make it through review because its description doesn’t match the exact parameters of the billing rules’ language. AI and machine learning can pick up on language that may not be explicitly called out in billing rules.
  • What to Look For in an AI-Enabled Invoice Review Solution: All AI-enabled invoice review solutions are not created equal. When choosing a solution, you should look for specific features, including historical analysis, ELM integration, continuous learning, advanced analytics and reporting, advanced bill review services and reduced bill review time. The Quick Start Guide explains each of these features and what to look for.

Just how much of a difference can AI-assisted invoice review make? One historical review of a Fortune 500’s outside counsel spend found an extra 11-20% in potential savings. For example, when AI reviewed an average of $45 million in invoices for one year, it detected $900K of non-attorney billing, $1M in block billing and $100K of travel-related fees during the height of COVID.

AI-assisted invoice review also helps catch common errors fast, helps companies meet their ROI objectives more quickly, helps boost productivity and better insulates companies from fraud. It does so by combining smart rules, keeping experts in the loop and employing powerful analytics.

To learn more about finding those between the rules invoice errors, download the Quick Start Guide here.

For more information on contract lifecycle management, contract AI and more, contact Onit today, or you can request a demonstration.

Can Robots Replace Lawyers? Legal AI Experts Weigh In

Posted on December 28, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Here’s a question almost every in-house counsel and legal professional has considered: Can robots replace lawyers? After all, AI does everything from diagnosing medical conditions to driving cars. Isn’t it only a matter of time before AI practices law?

Well, it isn’t Terminator time just yet of robots replacing lawyers, according to experts. But … it will make your job a lot easier.

The past year has been an exciting one in terms of legal technology, particularly in the area of AI. As businesses have been required to constantly evolve in the face of shifting pandemic demands and the need to accommodate remote work, AI has taken center stage for contracting and other critical legal tasks.

We’ve compiled the latest educational resources for AI, featuring experts weighing in on everything from how it will affect lawyers, contracting and legal operations. Consider it your year-end AI wrap-up!

Can Robots Replace Lawyers? Let’s Talk AI and the Legal Profession.

  • How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law: Nick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, sat down with Jared Correia, host of Above the Law’s Non-Eventcast podcast (available on Apple and Spotify), to discuss how AI impacts the legal world. The truth is that most lawyers are likely already using AI even if they don’t realize it. In fact, Nick argues, AI is making it an exciting time to be a lawyer.
  • Will AI Replace Lawyers & Other Myths: Legal AI Mythbusters: As with most buzzwords, there’s a whole host of misconceptions about AI’s capabilities. For example, can robots replace lawyers? Nick and Jean Yang, Vice President of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence, united for a webinar dispelling common AI misconceptions. Together, they help legal professionals decipher marketing-speak and determine what’s genuinely AI and what’s just software.
  • To AI or Not to AI: The Great Debate on Legal AI Tools: While AI certainly plays a significant role in helping with routine, time-consuming tasks, is legal AI always the right answer? Onit hosted a webinar with Consilio and Buying Legal Council, titled “To AI or Not to AI? The Big Debate,” to answer precisely that question. Two teams addressed a hypothetical work scenario, alternatively arguing that AI tools for lawyers or outsourcing to an ALSP were the answer. You can also watch the webinar to learn which team’s proposal won.
  • The Future of the Legal Profession, AI and Legal Work: The legal profession faced seemingly endless changes in 2020 and 2021. Understandably, many people are anxious to know what’s in store for the future. Onit asked leading economist Daniel Susskind to tackle precisely that question. Daniel offers insights on what changes the industry should expect in the future, what role technology and AI will play and much more.
  • Four Legal AI Trends Impacting Corporate Legal Departments: AI accomplishes more every day. From medicine to piloting jets to dancing, AI grabs a foothold across all industries, including law. Ari Kaplan, attorney, legal industry analyst, author, technologist and host of the Reinventing Professionals podcast, interviewed Nick about how AI impacts corporate legal departments. He shared the legal AI trends that defined the past year.

How AI Makes Contracting Easier

Onit is a leading provider of AI-powered legal technology solutions, including contract AI. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you transform your legal function in the new year.

What NOT To Do In 2022: Legal Tech Trends To Ignore in the New Year

Posted on December 21, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events

As workloads and the need to contain costs increase, corporate legal departments continue to turn to legal technology – so much so that Gartner predicts legal technology budgets will increase threefold by 2025.

Technology innovation, especially in artificial intelligence (AI), has fundamentally transformed the way legal professionals do business and how organizations run their legal function. While it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of legal technology, it’s important to keep perspective. Not all legal industry tech trends are ones that should be followed.

How can you sort the helpful trends from the hype?

Three experts from Buying Legal, Consilio and Onit recently gathered to discuss just that. Together, they explored the current state of legal tech and AI, how corporate legal departments should function as we enter the new year and which current legal trends are better to avoid.

Read on to learn which legal tech trends you might want to pass on as we enter 2022.

The Current Pulse of Corporate Legal

As we get ready to wrap up 2021, it’s a good time to take stock of where we currently stand when it comes to legal tech and corporate legal operations.

While some have posited that AI has become over-hyped, our expert panel explains that that’s not entirely the case. Instead, AI tends to be misunderstood, with different people frequently meaning different things when they say AI. This can lead to misunderstandings and even disappointment when it comes to implementing AI.

The top legal areas where AI is currently seeing some of the most significant traction are invoice review, contract review and risk monitoring. Nonetheless, companies still take different approaches to overall legal tech implementation, ranging from all-in-one platforms to best-in-class point solutions to enterprise applications.

Regardless of how you’ve implemented AI and other legal technologies up till now, however, it’s important to remember going forward that legal no longer stands alone. To succeed, you need to involve your department in overall enterprise discussions and initiatives regarding technology.

Legal Tech Trends to Avoid in 2022

While interest in legal tech will only continue to grow in the coming year, not all legal technology trends should be followed. The webinar outlines several emerging trends to avoid in the new year, including:

  • DON’T jump on every new technology that comes out – New AI and other legal tech tools are coming out constantly. It can be tempting to buy the shiny object but think about what you’re trying to accomplish with technology before you buy.
  • DON’T make the mistake of thinking that huge AI systems will solve all your problems – When AI first came out, it made a massive splash with powerful tools like Watson. In reality, the AI you use at your organization will exist on a smaller scale and be targeted at solving discrete problems.
  • DON’T rush to widespread AI implementation – Consider the strategic places where AI will be most helpful and practical (for example, NDA automation). This approach gives you time to understand the technology and the value in a much quicker time frame.
  • DON’T think that all your data needs to be kept local – With the introduction of the GDPR and the proliferation of privacy regulations, there’s been a trend toward scaring people into thinking they need to keep all their data in-country for compliance reasons. In reality, this is just a backward path back to in-house servers when there are other ways to achieve compliance.
  • DON’T let cost concerns keep you from the technology you need – Yes, nearly all organizations are increasingly looking to cut costs. You shouldn’t, however, allow that trend keep you from innovating. Instead, you can justify to the business why an investment in technology now will pay off in the long run.

To hear more about the current state of legal tech, including which trends you should be adopting and which to avoid, you can listen to the entire webinar.

Contact Onit today to learn more about how our solutions can help you transform the way you do business in the new year.