Category: Business Process Management

Quick Start Guide: AI-Powered CLM Tool for Corporate Legal, Procurement and Sales

Posted on June 15, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Corporate legal departments are increasingly relying on AI and other technologies like a CLM tool and automation to reduce costs, boost efficiency and better collaborate with other business units on contracts.

While many organizations have started to focus on how contract AI benefits the corporate legal department, the right CLM system offers advantages beyond legal to other contract stakeholders in your organization like sales and procurement. To explain how AI-powered CLM benefits all these different groups, we recently put together our handy Quick Start Guide: Contract AI: How it Pays Off for Corporate Legal, Sales and Procurement.

Here are just a few of the AI and CLM benefits covered in the Quick Start Guide.

Better Productivity and Insight for Legal with a CLM Tool and AI

A CLM tool powered by AI improves productivity by handling much of the scut work related to pre-signature contract review. AI manages the first-pass review, makes recommendations and delivers a risk profile. One study showed that new users of legal AI contract review software were immediately 51.5% more productive and 34% more efficient. When you multiply those gains across all the lawyers in an average midsized organization (55, according to this survey by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium), it’s the equivalent of adding 28 lawyers to your team without actually increasing headcount.

AI-powered CLM tools are also transforming the legal ops role by standardizing and automating legal processes and creating a single point of truth for contract data. Contract AI empowers legal ops professionals to have better visibility into deals, keep drafting and negotiations on track, reduce risk and improve governance, accelerate turnaround time, cut costs and more.

Shorter Sales Cycles

Legal doesn’t have to serve as a black box for sales departments, where requests go in and responses come back with zero insight into progress or process. AI-powered CLM tools allow sales departments to break free from using disparate systems and instead operate in a single repository and workflow for all their contracts.

Inefficiency and lack of transparency are two of the biggest roadblocks for sales departments, and contract AI removes them. This allows sales professionals to close deals faster, automate contract requests, have real-time insights on active contracts, have access to the information they need when they need it, and engage in newfound levels of self-service.

Better Spend Management for Procurement

Much like it does for sales, the right AI-powered CLM tool serves as a single point of truth for all procurement activities across an enterprise. Procurement can’t function without contracts, and contract AI allows procurement to be flexible enough to tackle all the contract-related tasks essential to the procurement function.

Among other things, AI-powered CLM systems empower procurement professionals to improve business outcomes, decrease risk, manage spend against budget, have insight into contract negotiations and engage in self-service for routine contracts like NDAs.

For more insight into how AI and CLM are revolutionizing day-to-day business for legal, sales and procurement, you can download the complete Quick Start Guide for an AI-powered CLM tool here.

Five Legal Operations Trends Uncovered in the CLOC 2021 State of the Industry Report

Posted on June 10, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

What are the latest legal operations trends affecting corporate legal? According to the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) 2021 State of the Industry Survey report, the median external spend increased by 84%, more work has moved in-house and legal departments continue to grow.

In collaboration with the Association of Corporate Counsel, the survey solicited responses from 200 organizations, 48 of which were Fortune 500 companies, across more than 22 industries in 31 states and 21 countries. Respondents spanned a wide range of industries, with the most (26%) coming from the technology sector.

1. External Legal Spend Up by 84%, But Internal Legal Spend Catches Up

While outside legal spend varied widely across survey participants, the overall results showed a marked increase in external legal expenditure in 2020 as compared to 2019. Median outside spend nearly doubled in the past year, up to $14.5 million from $7.9 million the previous year. (For those looking to control legal costs, here’s a good place to start.)

The median internal legal spend wasn’t far off, coming in at $13.3 million. While there was some variation based on the size of the companies, overall legal spend across all survey participants broke down exactly 50-50 between internal and external legal expenditure. In the previous year, the split came in at 60-40 in favor of external spend.

2. In-House Counsel, ALSPs Taking on More Work

Despite increased external spend, companies are bringing more work in-house – something indicated by past legal operations trends founded by CLOC. In fact, 39% of respondents reported moving more work in-house in 2020, compared to 28% the year before.

The prominence of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) continued to slowly increase over the past year, highlighting other significant legal operations trends. For example, when it came to ALSPs, 71% of respondents reported using the same number of ALSPs as in the previous year. However, 24% increased the number of ALSPs they used and 21% reported shifting more work to ALSPs as opposed to law firms. Three-quarters of the participants said that the law firm/ALSP balance remained the same as in the previous year.

3. Legal Operations Trends Point to Larger Legal Departments

Among the companies surveyed, the average size of the legal department was 104 full-time employees, with smaller companies reporting fewer legal department employees and larger companies reporting larger legal departments. The entertainment/media, insurance and biotech/pharma/life sciences sectors reported having the most full-time employees in their legal departments.

Increases in legal department headcount mirrored those of last year – 40% of respondents in 2021 said they increased their number of dedicated legal operations full-time employees, just as they did in 2020. The most notable increases in headcount were seen at mid-sized companies. The average size of legal operations teams also increased across both industry sectors and company sizes.

4. Clarity Around Legal Operations Responsibilities – Proof of Function’s Maturity

Not surprisingly, the top-five most common services provided by legal operations were the same in 2021 as they were in 2020, according to survey participants. This signals the growing influence and prevalence of legal operations on the whole – meaning there’s a consensus in the industry on the role and value of the responsibility.

The most common legal operations services include:

  • Process development and project management
  • Data analytics
  • Technical and process support
  • Vendor management
  • Financial management

5. Priorities for 2021 and Beyond

According to the legal operations trends uncovered by CLOC, in-house legal departments are also looking ahead to shifting priorities. Implementing a Diversity and Inclusion program was ranked as the top priority in 2021 for 61% of respondents, up from a fifth-place ranking the previous year. Other priorities included automating legal processes (as exemplified by this contract lifecycle management case study), implementing new technology and right sourcing legal work.

You can read the entire survey report here.

Get the inside track on legal operations trends, the very best events and helpful content from the legal community by joining Lean Into LegalOps today.

Legal Industry News: Current News and Trends in Legal Department Operations, June 2021

Posted on June 8, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Welcome to Onit’s June industry run-down, where we share with you some of the most pertinent and timely articles on legal department operations news. We hope this roundup of legal industry trends provides some useful takeaways.

In today’s digest, we share a recap of CLOC’s annual State of the Industry Survey and its recent virtual Global Institute, words of advice for corporate legal transformation, how AI finds even more billing guidelines violations and more.

#1 AI in the Legal Sector by the Numbers

More and more corporate legal departments are turning to AI every day to handle manual tasks, boost efficiency and gain insights for informed decision-making. You’ve likely already incorporated AI into some aspect of your day-to-day practice. After all, we’ve all heard the claims about how much it transforms everyday tasks. But just how much of a difference does AI really make?

This blog post breaks down the numbers and outlines some of the most significant gains to be gained through AI in the legal sector, including:

  • A 24% reduction in the average sales cycle and a 9% annual cost reduction by using an AI-powered CLM solution
  • A 51.5% increase in user productivity and the ability to redline a contract in under 2 minutes with legal AI software for contract review
  • The ability to review 6,000 contracts at once and access over 500 contract data points with AI for contract extraction
  • A 5-10% reduction in outside counsel spend with an AI-powered ELM solution

(Source: Onit blog)

#2 CLOC Sets Benchmarks for Legal Department Operations

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) recently released the 2021 State of the Industry Survey report, the organization’s annual review of trends to watch in the legal ops space. This year’s survey, conducted in collaboration with the Association of Corporate Counsel, garnered responses from 200 organizations (including 48 Fortune 500 companies) across more than 22 industries in 31 states and 21 countries.

The 2021 report highlights how priorities have shifted through the uncertainty of 2020, with legal ops growing, legal spend increasing and more work coming in-house. Some of the most notable survey results include:

  • 39% of respondents said they brought more work in-house in 2021, compared to only 28% the year before
  • Nearly all respondents reported using the same number or more ALSPs than the year before
  • 40% of respondents increased their number of dedicated, full-time legal ops employees
  • 61% of respondents identified implementing a Diversity and Inclusion program as a top priority for 2021

You can read the entire survey report here.

(Source: CLOC)

#3 Workflow Automation, Return to Office Top “Big Picture” Plans for Legal Department Operations

On the final day of CLOC’s recent virtual Global Institute, one legal department operations panel took an in-depth look at why organizations need a well-defined plan for implementing new technology and preparing to handle business in a post-pandemic world.

Legal ops professionals will play a huge role in that planning and implementation. They’re pivotal in big-picture technology adoption because they’re often the most on top of innovation and the latest trends in the legal tech market. Legal ops will also be integral to making sure the rest of the legal department and the business as a whole actually adopt the new technologies they find.

(Source: Legaltech News)

#4 Legal Department Operations Leaders Share Their Best Strategies for Transformation

Change is a constant in our world, especially in the last year and a half. While workloads continue to increase in-house, the need to work quickly and effectively remains a common goal. But how can legal operations professionals spur change – especially technological change  – in corporate legal?

Corporate legal department operations experts from Mastercard, McKesson, Microsoft and GlaxoSmithKline sat down at the CLOC Global Institute to explain their best approaches, including:

  • Understanding the reasons for resistance
  • Communicating the vision of change and what that means
  • Conveying the importance of transformation on a personal level to team members
  • Understanding what resources are necessary to enact change, including people, tools and priorities

Bonus: What’s driving transformation in legal? Operations expert Brad Rogers digs into the topic, breaks down what is accelerating the need for change in corporate legal. Scroll to the bottom of this blog post to hear the podcast. You can also find the Onit podcast on Apple, Google Play, Spotify or other podcast platforms.

(Source: Corporate Counsel)

#5 How to Find Up to 11% More Non-Compliant Charges in Legal Invoices After Billing Rules and Standard Review

Growing workloads and other priorities limit the time in-house counsel can devote to reviewing outside counsel bills spanning hundreds of pages and thousands of line items. Enterprise legal management, matter management, e-billing, billing code standards and automated billing rules reduce the burden of invoice review. However, AI offers the opportunity for even more technological innovation.

On May 26, Onit announced the debut of InvoiceAI, an AI offering for first-pass legal invoice review and analytics that’s now available to customers. InvoiceAI handles first-pass legal invoice review to identify errors better and increase the consistency of application of billing guidelines and spend management best practices.

On average, InvoiceAI has identified 6-11% of unactioned errors in historical invoices, above and beyond what had already been identified by standard invoice review. Even in a year when travel was significantly restricted, InvoiceAI uncovered an average of $100,000 worth of savings on travel-related time and expenses that had been improperly submitted to customers.

For a free AI analysis of 90 days of historical billing data, Onit customers can reach out to their account managers and other interested parties can email [email protected].

(Source: LawSites Blog)

Get the inside track on legal department operations trends, the very best events and helpful content from the legal community by joining Lean Into LegalOps today. The program unites the legal community, providing them with a forum to share and learn from one another and get the latest news and trends in legal operations and technology.

CLM AI: Does Your Contract Software Redline Contracts for You?

Posted on June 1, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

When you ask today’s busy lawyers what they most need from legal AI, the answer is tools that help them be more productive like CLM AI contract redlining software.

While much of life might have gone on pause in the last year, contracts didn’t. In fact, lawyers have been handling more contracts than ever. For most companies, hiring more staff just to handle contracts isn’t a viable option. How, then, can lawyers speed up the contracting process and boost their productivity? The answer is having the right technology and features, like the features you can find in the right legal AI contract lifecycle management solution.

Take, for example, redlining contracts.

There are a lot of products and software that claim to help increase the efficiency of your contract review, but does your current contract AI redline your contracts for you? It should.

Contract Redlining Software to Help Protect Your Company From Risk

In a typical legal team, junior lawyers can be tasked with first-pass contract review, with the goal of flagging any issues that appear problematic or go against company standards. For example, if a third-party contract has a questionable clause, the junior attorney will usually circle the clause in red pen or mark it digitally and send it up the chain to senior lawyers for review. The senior lawyers would then review the clause and determine whether it’s something the company is willing to accept.

It doesn’t always go that smoothly, though.

Today’s busy lawyers are handling multiple tasks at once, while also juggling the demands of an increased workload and remote collaboration, meaning that errors can happen. If that clause is on page 45 of a 50-page contract and the lawyer has been reviewing it for several hours, it might not always get the attention it deserves due to fatigue or other priorities.

AI legal document review supports the contract review process and reduces the chance of human error. The contract redlining process is critical to protecting company interests. It’s also a fairly standard process, though it has historically been inefficient and time-consuming. All these factors make redlining a prime candidate for CLM AI.

What if there is a way to automate that first-pass review, better flag potential issues and get the whole job done in less than two minutes?

The Benefits of Redlining by CLM AI

Tapping into legal contract AI with automated redlining software is an incredible advantage when it comes to keeping up with increasing contract demands. It also creates a legitimate solution for reducing attorneys’ low-value, busy work.

Contract AI redlining isn’t only a tool that’s useful for lawyers – it’s also a great way to allow other business units, like sales or procurement, to engage in self-service. These other departments touch the company’s contracts all the time, but they typically have to wait in line to have their contracts reviewed by legal when they come in.

With ReviewAI contract management, business users can run an AI-powered redline in less than two minutes, spot potential issues right away, determine if there are problems to solve and then automatically escalate critical issues to legal as necessary. The redlining provided by CLM AI essentially allows business users to self-service the review of common contracts such as NDAs.

As with any contract AI, automating the redlining process isn’t replacing lawyers, it’s helping them be better at their jobs. It even performs a critical training function for junior lawyers and new legal team members. Company playbooks are based on decades of institutional knowledge. As junior lawyers see the AI data extraction results the software produces, they learn the playbook, essentially learning from the company’s best and brightest.

ReviewAI contract management from Onit redlines and automates your contract review, applying your playbook to find the things humans might miss and looking for any crucial terms that are missing. CLM AI takes less than two minutes, speeds up contract review by up to 70% and increases productivity by more than 50%.

Schedule an Onit demo today to learn more.

Meet InvoiceAI: Onit’s New Artificial Intelligence Offering for Legal Invoice Review

Posted on May 26, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal invoice review is a necessary process for corporate legal departments and also notoriously complex and time-consuming – even with business rules applied. Nevertheless, legal departments spend countless dollars every year for in-house counsel and other professionals to manually inspect invoices, whether flagged or not. That’s time wasted on administrative tasks that in-house professionals can reallocate to higher-value work and strategies.

That’s all about to change.

Today, Onit announced the debut of InvoiceAI for its customers. The artificial intelligence offering for first-pass legal invoice review and analytics decreases the burden of invoice review while providing insights into spend analytics.

An Intelligent Review

The sheer volume of legal invoices has pummeled Fortune 500 corporate legal departments for years, challenging corporate counsels’ ability to understand and control legal spend and build productive partnerships with law firms.

Even with flagged invoices, corporate counsel can face a large number of line items on each invoice to reconcile and miss noted issues or errors. Enforcing outside counsel guidelines is complicated even further with issues like vague or incomplete invoices, improper block billing, incorrect coding and more.

InvoiceAI builds off Onit’s existing billing rules engine, enhancing the invoice review process by incorporating machine learning and natural language processing to more accurately and efficiently identify invoice issues that need further review. Our machine learning models identify potentially problematic billing issues like administrative tasks or travel and integrate with existing eBilling, legal spend management and enterprise legal management technologies. What you get is an intelligent review that learns more as you process more invoices, plus all the advantages of our configurable rules engine – the best of both worlds when it comes to understanding legal spend.

AI-Powered Invoice Review Leads to Significant Cost Savings

While InvoiceAI’s models continue their training, the offering is already used to analyze past invoices and identify potentially non-compliant charges under company billing guidelines and legal spend management best practices.

A select group of Onit Fortune 100 customers ran InvoiceAI through historical bills with significant results. InvoiceAI uncovered on average of 6-11% unactioned errors for invoices submitted in 2020, above and beyond the savings that Onit’s rules-based invoice review tools had already found.

For example, even though 2020 was a notably slow year for travel, InvoiceAI identified travel charges in the high six-figure range that should not have been billed.

On top of better invoice review, you also get powerful analytics. The results generated by InvoiceAI can serve as a learning tool for outside counsel, giving them a clear report on the core commercial expectations of the companies they represent. The reports are also beneficial for demonstrating immediate savings in outside spend to internal stakeholders.

The Future of Legal Invoice Review, Ready Now for Customers

InvoiceAI is available to Onit customers now and will be generally available to the public in the fall.

AI-enabled invoice review from SimpleLegal, Onit’s subsidiary, will launch this summer, with availability open now for select existing corporate legal customers.

If you’re currently an Onit or SimpleLegal customer and you want a complimentary AI analysis of the last 90 days of your billings, contact your account manager today.

If you’re not currently a customer but want to learn more about how InvoiceAI can improve your legal invoice review and legal spend management, contact [email protected] today.

How Roche Reduced the Risks of Incident and Compliance Investigations with Workflow Platform Technology

Posted on May 21, 2021 by - Business Process Management

More companies than ever have leaned into digital transformation, recreating processes and technologies associated with essential business processes such as incident and compliance investigations. Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche perfectly exemplified this type of innovation when it adopted a workflow automation platform to streamline its investigations.

Over the course of the decade, the company shifted from paper to digital spreadsheets to manage the incident and compliance investigations process and eventually implemented a case management system. However, they found the case management technology to lack the flexibility for continued innovation. The vendor could not quickly provide updated features and lacked simple conveniences such as presenting dates in the European format.

Roche quickly pivoted, a process discussed in a recent webinar held with Swiss LegalTech Association (SLTA), Onit and Kroll titled “Managing Compliance Investigations with Workflow Platform Technology at Roche.” Speakers included:

  • Sébastien Bergier, Director Internal Investigations, Roche
  • Imran Khan, Computer Forensics Manager, Roche
  • Matt DenOuden, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Onit
  • Roger Jarman, Director, Legal Management Consulting, Kroll
  • Christoph Kueng, President, Swiss LegalTech Association
  • Nicolas Torrent, Vice President, Communication and Marketing, Co-head Geneva Chapter, Swiss LegalTech Association

You can view the on-demand presentation here.

Tackling Compliance Investigations with Workflow Automation

For Roche, a case management solution was critical not just for their teams to run their cases effectively, but also for senior leaders to have access to insights and trends in incident and compliance investigations. In addition, they wanted a system up and running as soon as possible that would cover their basic needs without compromising the integrity of their investigations and then evolve that system over time. After all, technology develops rapidly and businesses need to evolve in line with it.

The answer to building a proper case management system was to dismantle current processes that weren’t working. Roche then rebuilt by partnering with Onit and Kroll, exploring how the company managed its investigations, how they wanted to evolve them and what analytics they wanted to put in place.

With Onit Apptitude, Roche quickly built a front-to-back solution to manage the entire lifecycle of investigations. Thanks to the team’s vision, Onit and Kroll, the company introduced a solution that reduces risk by bridging the gap between legal, compliance and other departments. According to Roche, Onit Apptitude quickly and efficiently provided a visual on how the system would look and function.

Roche’s first iteration was ready in three months and went live within six months after that.

You can listen to the entire webinar and learn more about Roche’s transformation journey here.

To learn more about Onit Apptitude, visit here or schedule a demonstration.

AI in the Legal Sector by the Numbers

Posted on May 13, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Legal AI software has commanded the attention of corporate legal departments worldwide, thanks to its ability to offload manual work, increase efficiency and provide more insight into day-to-day tasks and strategic endeavors. As a result, more and more corporate legal departments are investing in AI and starting to discover its benefits.

By now, in-house counsel have been inundated with countless claims about how AI can increase productivity and efficiency, cut costs and boost revenues, and generally make work better. But, if you’re anything like us, numbers matter. They go beyond hyperbole and illustrate how effective legal AI software can be.

Here are data points to illustrate the difference AI is making across other businesses – and especially in the legal sector.

The Overall Use of AI

In November 2020, McKinsey & Company released a comprehensive report on The State of AI in 2020, and the results showed a commitment to AI across industries. Half of the 2,400 participants responding to the survey indicated that their organizations had adopted AI for at least one internal function or business unit. Not surprisingly, businesses in the telecom and other hi-tech sectors reported the highest rates of AI adoption.

As for the business functions seeing the most AI traction, service operations, product and service development, and marketing and sales topped the list. Over two-thirds of the respondents who said they incorporated AI into these functions also credited that adoption for increasing revenues.

Notably, 22% of the respondents said that they could attribute over 5% of their enterprise’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to the use of AI. An additional 48% attributed at least some EBIT to using AI.

Legal AI Software Numbers

The overall enterprise-wide benefits of AI seen in organizations worldwide are certainly playing out in the legal arena. AI has now been applied to many routine but critical functions in the legal sector, with impressive results.

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)

Contracts are one of the largest areas where legal organizations can benefit from AI.

According to Gartner, by 2023, legal AI software will bring 30% more efficiency to organizations that deploy CLM solutions, with 90% of multinational global enterprises and 50% of regional midsize organizations investing in CLM solutions by that year.

Onit has discovered comparable results with its own CLM solution (which is powered by business process automation and AI-powered business intelligence platforms), finding that corporate legal departments can expect to see the following savings:

  • A 24% reduction in the average sales cycle
  • A 20% reduction in the average hours spent on contracts
  • A 9% annual average cost savings

With legal AI software for contract review, data shows that in-house attorneys and legal operations professionals can expect to:

  • Increase contract review and approval speed by 60-70%
  • Improve user productivity by 51.5% on average
  • Redline contracts in less than 2 minutes

Of course, contract lifecycle management doesn’t end when your contract is signed. Each signed contract contains valuable data that can be extracted to improve your contracting processes going forward and allow you to make better, more informed business decisions. AI for contract extraction can help corporate legal:

  • Review 6,000 contracts at once
  • View over 500 contract data points
  • Export contract data in 5 seconds

Legal AI Software for Enterprise Legal Management (ELM)

AI performance extends beyond contracts to managing legal spend. For example, Onit’s ELM solution will help in-house counsel save 5-10% on outside counsel spend. Those savings increase when AI is applied to the first-pass invoice review. We’ll have more data illustrating this point coming soon with our upcoming announcement for InvoiceAI for enterprise legal management.

To learn more about how Onit’s AI solutions are changing the way legal professionals do business, contact us today or email [email protected].

ReviewAI Tools Revolutionized with ReviewAI Smart Checklists

Posted on May 11, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

It’s no secret that in-house lawyers have too much to do and too little time to do it, making contract review tools a necessity, not a luxury. So, how can contract AI help in-house lawyers? They often have a long list of what they want and need from AI and technology that includes:

  • Eliminating painful, repetitive and non-complex work
  • Freeing up time to focus on strategy and high-value work
  • Increasing the quality of contract review
  • Working faster and handling higher volumes of work

With these priorities in mind, Onit launched contract AI tool ReviewAI seven months ago. ReviewAI does the repetitive work that lawyers want to streamline so they can concentrate on more strategic contributions. It reviews, redlines and edits all types of contracts in less than two minutes, including NDAs, MSAs, SOWs, purchase agreements, employment agreements and more. In addition, its Microsoft Word Add-In enables lawyers to work the way they are accustomed to working.

Now, Onit has announced a substantial enhancement to ReviewAI – Smart Checklists. It’s contract AI that goes beyond alerts and does the work.

Keep reading to learn more, view a demo here or you can hear Jean Yang, Vice President of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, explain it in the latest episode of our Onit podcast.

Contract AI That Goes Beyond Alerts – It Does the Work

Smart Checklists, offered as part of the ReviewAI Word Add-In, evolves contract review tools by turning playbook checks into intelligent and collaborative tasks. It tracks what’s important, what to do next and what is done – all in an intuitive solution that requires no training.

How does it work? Open a contract, and ReviewAI has Smart Checklists ready to go.

As a result of this contract AI tool, lawyers save upward of 52% of their time on contracts, while legal teams improve consistency, lower contract risks and better support the business.

Making ReviewAI Tools Smarter

Lawyers have always worked off of some sort of checklist during contract reviews. The problem is that the lists often only exist on a piece of paper or in someone’s head. They’re static.

ReviewAI Smart Checklists uses AI to create checklists made up of concrete, task-based actions that are generated from your company playbook. Rather than going through the tedious undertaking of applying that playbook yourself, ReviewAI digitizes it for you automatically. If you need to break your contract review into multiple sessions, ReviewAI and its Smart Checklists remember where you left off and make it easy to keep track of where you are, what’s been done and what you still need to do.

How to Get Started with ReviewAI Smart Checklists

Onit’s ReviewAI Smart Checklists, a revolutionary approach for contract review tools, is available immediately.

To learn more, you can:

Legal Industry News: Current News and Trends for Legal Operations Resources, May 2021

Posted on May 6, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Welcome to our May run-down of legal operations resources, where we share with you some of the most pertinent and timely articles for industry news. We hope this roundup provides some valuable takeaways.

In today’s lineup, we feature insights about how platform technology is transforming legal operations, the benefits of CLM and AI for the Lenovo legal department and new CLOC leadership.

#1

How Platform Technologies Enable Enterprise Collaboration For Corporate Legal Departments

Legal departments no longer function as black boxes within organizations. Today’s legal department regularly engages in cross-collaboration with all departments across the organization, typically with a high level of transparency. Along with the increase in collaboration has come a greater expectation that legal departments will heighten the level of service they provide and demonstrate the value they bring to the business.

Platform technologies are making it possible for legal departments to meet these expectations. Many organizations have replaced stand-alone software and solutions with a platform approach that allows companies to streamline processes across the organization and empowers legal departments to better connect with other departments. The article provides an in-depth discussion of the benefits of platform technology and essential tips on how to pick the right platform.

 (Source: The Impact Lawyers)

 #2

What’s Fueling Transformation in Corporate Legal? A Leading Operations Expert Explains.

The legal industry is primed for transformation, not unlike that seen in healthcare two decades ago, according to Brad Rogers, SVP of Strategy and Growth for Onit and former Chief Operations Officer and Chief of Staff for Advocacy and Oversight at a Fortune Global 100 company. Leaders in law are now thinking differently about how to drive efficiency, effectiveness and value. The transition – which was happening well before remote working – is accelerating, with new operating models that are built on what he sees as the four major drivers of change in the industry. You can hear Brad discuss these factors in this podcast.

(Source: Onit podcast)

#3

CLOC, One of the Leading Legal Operations Resources, Welcomes a New President 

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) announced a shift in leadership, with Mike Haven assuming the role of President on May 1. Haven has been a board member of CLOC since March 2019.

According to Haven, “I will continue to build on our commitment to support the entire legal ecosystem and foster a more diverse, inclusive, efficient and innovative culture.”

Haven is currently the Head of Legal Operations and Associate General Counsel for Intel, with prior law and legal ops experience that includes roles at K&L Gates LLP, NetApp and Gap Inc. He has long been active in the CLOC community, advocating for unity in the legal industry to overcome obstacles to progress.

As a reminder, the CLOC Global Institute starts on May 10. You can sign up now to join discussions on everything from the state of the industry to advancing the strategic direction of a corporate legal department and beyond.

(Source: CLOC)

#4

The Future of Contracting: CLM Automation with AI at Lenovo

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software and AI continue to transform legal operations by allowing for faster and more efficient contracting processes – something that can benefit every company out there. The combination of CLM and AI also allows organizations to enhance risk and spend management, improve revenue and profit margins and increase visibility into counterparty relationships.

Companies that are looking to reap the benefits of digital transportation can learn from those who have successfully undertaken the transformation journey before them. In a recent webinar for the World Commerce and Contracting Association, the Lenovo Legal Department provides an important touchstone for legal operations resources by describing how they did just that, laying out the crucial factors that led to success and the ability to improve efficiency by 30% with contract AI.

(Source: Onit)

#5

Law Firm (Mostly) Goes Meeting-Free to Address Fatigue

It’s no secret that nearly everyone across the legal industry is suffering from at least some level of burnout after the past year. But what can we do about it?

For Dentons, one idea has been to place a pause on meetings for a week to allow employees to either take time off or play catch-up. The no-meetings week, which occurred the last week of April, applies to standing meetings but not to project and client deadlines. It’s not the first time the firm has tried this approach – they had a similar no-meetings week in December 2020. While the larger question remains as to whether the move is enough to combat a year of pandemic-related stress, the pause is an excellent recognition of the past year’s unique demands.

(Source: ABA Journal)

Get the inside track on legal operations resources and trends, the very best events and helpful content from the legal community by joining Lean Into LegalOps today. The program provides members of the legal community with a forum to share and learn from one another via webinars, debates and weekly catch-up calls. Visit this page to join.

Six Must-Have Features to Look for in Legal Intake Software for Corporate Legal

Posted on April 19, 2021 by - Business Process Management

Legal intake software transforms a task that is often a frequent and significant contributor to a corporate legal department’s organizational chaos.

With no standard legal service request process or legal intake software, tracking and assigning requests is nearly impossible. Business partner requests for legal services are often tossed into the legal department sporadically by email, text or informal conversations from various departments. Usually, the requests omit necessary resources or documents, necessitating an email or phone conversation to obtain the relevant materials before the actual legal work can begin.

To overcome these obstacles, corporate legal departments should consider automated legal intake software.

By implementing an intelligent, self-service portal to initiate legal service requests, the first phase of the battle is already won. Information can be shared across departments and systems with this solution. Fewer staff members will need to spend time entering data for the same client and matter, saving money.

The benefits of legal service request (LSR) software include:

  • The ability to streamline and simplify the legal service request process
  • A drastic reduction of the cycle time spent on manual, administrative tasks
  • More time to focus on high-value legal tasks
  • Enhanced responsiveness to your business partners

If you think that LSR software would be a great thing to have in your corporate legal department, you are right.

Six Features You Should Look For In Legal Intake Software

  1. Central intake – The ability to support a central intake process for all legal service requests not only simplifies the process but it provides a complete audit trail as well.
  2. User-friendly Interface – The software should be intuitive, easy to learn and even easier to use with virtually no training to get started.
  3. Variable Workflow – The workflow process should be flexible and easy to change, meaning legal service requests can be altered, reviewed and approved by all the participants and new approvers can be quickly added without slowing down the process.
  4. Automated Notifications – Eliminate the “black box” perception. The software should automatically generate notifications to keep business partners updated on the status of their requests.
  5. Reporting & Dashboards – Reporting and dashboard views enable the corporate legal department to track legal service requests by region, department, business unit or other criteria.
  6. Rapid Deployment – A quick deployment means little or no IT involvement, so the corporate legal department can be up and running quickly.

All of this will allow the legal department to spend more time focusing on business consumers’ needs – not following up on paperwork and other purely administrative and time-consuming tasks. With well-chosen legal service request software, the legal department can provide higher quality services, operate more efficiently and become a driving force in fueling the company’s success.

To learn more about legal service request software, visit here or request a demo of how Onit can automate your legal service requests.